


Nothing But a Man

by Mertens



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom - Fandom, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, Human/Monster Romance, Hypnotism, Not Raoul friendly, Vampire Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28225698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertens/pseuds/Mertens
Summary: Chorus girl Christine Daae begins taking lessons from a mysterious tutor with the hopes of rising up in the ranks of the Opera Populaire, a place full of old tales and ghost stories. Despite presenting himself to her as an angel, she knows her new tutor is nothing but a man... Isn't he?
Relationships: Christine Daaé & Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Comments: 47
Kudos: 96





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrashJay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashJay/gifts).



> Tried to take inspiration from Catcorsair in the characterization of Erik, with the operative word being "tried".
> 
> Hope you like it, TrashJay! <3

They said the Opera House was haunted. 

Christine would merely roll her eyes at this, just as she’d always rolled her eyes at the stories her Papa would tell. She’d heard all the stories growing up - helpful elves who mended shoes, kind enchantresses hiding behind the visages of old travelers, men who wore animal skins and peered out of animal eyes, spirits who lived in the rivers and trees, angels who watched over mortals whose hearts were pure. Her father had lived in a world of fantasy, but she lived in the world of reality - she’d been forced to, ever since he’d passed and left her all alone at a young age, trying to make her way in a world that hardly noticed her, let alone cared for her wellbeing. 

There was no fanfare when she first arrived at the Populaire. She was a girl of seventeen who had gained a role in the chorus on the recommendation of her benefactor, Professor Valerius. The old man had died a few weeks later. Mamma Valerius had lingered longer, staying around long enough to watch her dear Christine perform for two seasons before she, too, joined her husband in the hereafter. 

With every person that Christine had ever known lost and gone to her, she found her days had increasingly taken on a bleak, dreary feel. Her soul was as grey as the sky when it rained. The other chorus girls would laugh and chatter and she would join in, but her smile was a mask across the emptiness inside. 

She found herself frequently seeking solitude. 

It was an easy thing for her to find - the other girls kept to little groups as often as they could, giggling gaggles that were never far apart, too scared of the Opera Ghost and whatever other foul creatures they imagined lurking in the shadows. Respite was easy to find, in the dark places of the theater were none dared linger. A rational young woman, she knew there was nothing to fear in the darkness. 

That was why she had thought nothing of heading back to the dark and seemingly empty theater to look for something she’d lost. That was why when she heard the Voice, she stopped to talk to it. 

She had been looking for the little purse containing an embroidery kit that she’d left somewhere behind the stage during rehearsal earlier in the day. She’d borrowed it from a dancer, Meg Giry, to mend a careless tear in her costume, hoping to fix it before the costumer saw and took the repair fee out of her salary. But she’d misplaced the purse and had forgotten about it until now. Rehearsal had been over for several hours, and sooner or later Meg would be asking where her little purse full of needles and thread had gone, and Christine hoped to find it before then. 

She searched and searched for it, growing crosser and crosser, imagining the fight she’d have with Meg if she couldn’t find it. She began to hum an old Swedish song to herself, trying to manufacture cheerfulness in the hopes that it would start to feel real. When the humming didn’t suffice for her goal, she began to sing softly to herself as she searched. 

“You have a lovely voice, child,” a man’s voice suddenly said.

“Thank you, monsieur,” she replied easily, straightening up to look around for its source. 

“Such a shame to waste it in the chorus.”

“Is that so?” she asked, her eyes scanning every nook and cranny for this man. 

The voice chuckled, surprised at being addressed despite having spoken to her first. 

“It is indeed. Are you looking for something, child?”

She peered behind the huge red curtain of the stage, looking for the man. 

“I’m looking for you, monsieur.”

The Voice seemed terribly amused at this. 

“No, no, no, my dear - I mean _before_ I said anything - you were looking for something, yes?”

She paused. 

“A little purse, yes. I can’t seem to find it. Perhaps Meg already found it and took it with her,” Christine fretted and twisted her hands together as she began to scan the floor again for the purse. 

“Hmm. I see. Are you not... frightened?”

“Oh, I’ll be frightened of her reaction if I don’t find her sewing kit!”

“I meant of _me_ , dear child.”

She looked up again. 

“Do I have reason to be frightened of you, monsieur?”

“Have you no fear of the Opera Ghost?”

Her lips curled into a wry smile. 

“Perhaps... If you were the Opera Ghost. But you’re nothing but a man.”

“A man?” he echoed. 

“Yes. You must be the new stagehand,” she squinted up at the flies, trying to make out where he was standing. “We go through stagehands so often around here... Another one just quit recently, you know.”

“Oh? Did he, now?”

“He just up and left, no note, no anything. He’s been gone for a week now. You’re his replacement, I’m sure.”

The Voice chuckled, and it made her shiver. 

“Well, I do like to... help out, shall we say?”

“Won’t you step into the light, monsieur? So I can see you?”

“I’m rather busy at the moment, I’m afraid,” the Voice said, apologetic. “Until next time, Christine Daaé.”

She was about to ask how it was that the new stagehand already knew her, a mere chorus girl’s name, when suddenly she spied the little purse in a spot where she’d already looked twice. 

She stooped and snatched it up, then glanced around to see if the new stagehand was nearby, but still the theater looked empty. 

“Goodbye, monsieur. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other soon,” she addressed the room as she turned to leave. 

“Oh,” the Voice said, his smile evident in his tone. “We certainly will.”

It wasn’t until she was back in her dressing room, stowing the little purse away for the next time she’d see Meg, that she realized she was smiling. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled and it wasn’t a mask. 

At the next few rehearsals she kept a careful eye out for any new faces, but all she saw were the same old characters. She began to wonder if perhaps she’d imagined the entire exchange, or if she’d been speaking to a patron who was playing a trick on her instead of an employee. 

It was a week later that she heard the Voice in her dressing room. 

It was after a performance, and she was changing from her costume and into her regular clothes all by herself, not wishing to have the company of a dresser at the moment. She was used to doing things alone. She’d been doing them that way all her life, it seemed. 

“ _Christine..._ ”

Christine froze in the middle of lacing up her boots. It had been hardly above a whisper. She almost managed to convince herself that her own mind had imagined that low, sonorous voice from simply wishing to hear it again, but then it spoke once more. 

“Christine...”

She dropped her foot to the floor and looked around the room, her heart pounding. Was he outside? 

She cracked the door open and looked down both sides of the hallway, but there was no one around. 

The Voice chuckled, and she realized he was somewhere inside her dressing room - but where? 

She abandoned looking outside the room and began to tap on the wallpaper and wood paneling on the walls, looking for a hollow section in which he might be hiding. 

“Where are you?” she asked as she searched. “Are you inside the walls?”

“No, my dear, not there,” he replied. 

It was like a puzzle, and she loved puzzles. 

“Are you behind the mirror?”

She leaned close to her looking glass, the one that went from floor to ceiling, and gently traced her fingers over the reflective surface, studying it intently, as if she just looked hard enough she could discover him there. “Show yourself, if you are an honest man.”

“I’m afraid I cannot show myself, Christine.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“There is nothing to show - nothing that is _safe_ to show. I am an angel, Christine - the Angel of Music.”

Christine opened her mouth to reply the true identity of the _Angel of Music_ , but thought the better of it and closed her mouth again. 

“I see,” she said with an arched eyebrow. “And what does the _Angel of Music_ mean by coming into my dressing room like this?”

“Have you ever wanted more than what you have now, my dear?” The Voice crooned, and she became very still and very silent. 

“What do you mean?” 

She had meant to turn him down, rebuff him, but something about those words crooned from the other side of her mirror were alluring in a way she couldn’t even name. 

“You are a mere chorus girl, Christine, and yet - you could be so much more. With my help.”

She worried at her lip with her teeth. He wasn’t a stagehand or new employee. No, she realized what he was now. He was a patron, and he was propositioning her. 

“How would you help me, exactly?”

“Why, singing lessons, of course! I’ll teach you to sing like the angels - like one of my own kind. Just say the word, Christine.”

“I have no way of repaying you for such generous help, monsieur,” she said carefully. “I’m afraid I ought not accept.”

She highly doubted any of the patrons could sing, let alone give advice. He was probably older, balding, a doddering old man with musty old clothes and an excess of money that he would dote on her as he gave her “advice” that was hardly even advice at all. Or perhaps he had no money - none he wanted to give her, anyway - and he expected to give half-assed comments about her singing in return for other things from her. She was not opposed to the concept of the comforts and novelties his money could buy - sweets from the shop and extra coal for the fire - but truth be told, it felt like more human interaction than she cared to have for the foreseeable future. A little less candy, a little less warmth, a little less luxury - prices she was willing to pay to avoid the prattle and pretend of having to be around others for more than she already had to. 

“It’s not so very high a price, Christine,” he wheedled. “You do not even know what it is yet...”

She arched an eyebrow at the mirror and pressed her lips in a thin line. 

“Oh?”

“You must follow my instruction,” he told her. “You must take proper care of your instrument. You must trust me. And you must not reveal the secret of the Angel.”

He was annoying her now. She was a trained professional. He was a random man off the street trying to coax her into a relationship when all she wanted was freedom and peace and quiet. She wanted him to leave, but she knew better than to anger him. 

“Oh, I do appreciate the offer, but there’s nothing wrong with my singing. I’m happy to be in chorus, and I have no plans to-“

She tried to politely turn him down. He surely had nothing of value to impart to her. There were dozens of other girls he could ask - would ask, as soon as she sent him away. He’d get what he was looking for. 

But all that changed when he began to sing. 

His voice - his heavenly voice! It was a sound like no mere mortal could produce. He sang a song she’d never heard before in a language she didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter - she didn’t need to understand the words being crooned to her from behind her mirror to understand what she was experiencing, and as she sat on her stool, her pretty mouth gaping like a fish out of water, with those ravishing refrains floating down to her, she heard as she’d never heard before. 

Her hand floated unthinkingly up to her throat, the sudden image of _her_ singing on the stage with this same talent, the same voice, flooded every inch of her mind and blocked out all rational thought, and she was captivated by it. 

“Are still so certain, Christine Daaé?” his voice, smooth as silk, broke the silence she didn’t even realize was there. She blinked and shook herself, not certain how long she’d sat there after his song had ended. 

Against all her better judgment - she couldn’t even see the man! - she found herself looking up at the mirror and asking-

“When can we begin?”

She met with the Voice in her dressing room twice a week, and soon she began to look forward to her lessons more than she’d looked forward to anything in a long time. 

He never showed himself to her, falling back on the excuse that mortals should not gaze upon angels, but even still Christine was convinced he was just a man. It became her favorite topic of thought, occupying her mind in the boring and dull times and distracting her from the emptiness that was her life when she wasn’t on stage. 

Why did he hide? Perhaps he was famous - a member of nobility or even a singer from somewhere else - and wanted his privacy or to not get in trouble for taking her under his wing. Perhaps he was married, and didn’t want his wife to get ideas should she find out. Perhaps he was ugly, and wished to be judged solely on his talents and not on his face. Perhaps he was terribly shy, and this was the only way he could overcome his nerves. Knowing that he wished to hide did nothing to prevent her from asking nearly every lesson if she could see him. 

He eventually relented and told her his name was “Erik”, though when she asked if this meant he was Scandinavian, he was very evasive about it. 

“Where Erik is _from_ is not important, Christine,” he insisted. “All that truly matters is right now.”

All that truly mattered to her was that her voice was improving by leaps and bounds — and that she enjoyed their time together. 

Though she couldn’t see him, they had lively conversations, and it felt like talking to a friend. She would tell him about her day after the lesson was finished, and he would listen as though he actually cared, as though she weren’t a burden or just a silly girl with silly thoughts. He would inquire after her wellbeing, and about how she was getting along with various opera house employees, sympathizing when she mentioned who had been rude to her lately, pleased when she seemed to get along with the ballet rats and chorus girls. She told him about the stupid ghost stories the other girls all whispered and shrieked about, and he laughed heartily at these with her. She told him about the latest employees to go missing, never really noticing any real connection between those who were rude or unsavory and those who went away. 

“That Joseph Buquet never came back,” she said idly one day. 

“Oh?” 

He sounded surprised — he always sounded surprised when someone quit or disappeared, as though he couldn’t fathom that such a thing had happened. 

“Yes. Well, I’m not too torn up about it. He was always telling the most terrible stories to the ballet rats — I told you last week that he made little Jammes cry, didn’t I?”

“You did, my dear,” he said gravely. 

“I hope he doesn’t come back. Let him find a job somewhere else,” she said with a wave of a hand. “Good riddance, I say.”

“Good riddance,” he echoed, and she could practically hear his grin. 

“I must say, though — with so much turnover in some of these departments, it’s almost enough to make me believe the place really is haunted!”

They both laughed at the silly idea. 

“No, my dear — it’s these modern young men, you see. Too flighty on the whole, no dedication—! Ah!” He sighed and clicked his tongue. “They’ll never have good luck in their careers if they leave so easily! Why, I do believe our friend Joseph will never find another job again! Ha! Ha! Ha ha!”

She chuckled a little with him. 

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll find something,” she said, a little absentmindedly as she moved some perfume bottles about on her vanity. 

Erik merely hummed and changed the subject. 

On occasion, she tried to coax out as much information about him as she could, something she was sometimes successful in but never as successful as she would have liked. She knew what his tastes were in opera, and how he felt about certain stories and ideas, but never the material things — where he lived, what his job was (besides teaching her, which he didn’t get paid for), what his last name was, how long he’d lived in France. 

At last, three months after they had first begun her strange lessons, he seemed to consider her constant wishes. 

“I wish I could see you,” she said fondly, wistfully, as she often did. 

“Do you truly, child?” he asked thoughtfully. 

Her heart skipped a beat and she sat up straighter in her chair. 

“Oh, yes! I do! Truly!”

“Hmm. Perhaps— perhaps that could be arranged, dear heart.”

“Oh, please, Erik— we’ve talked for so long— I just want to see you! I want to see—“ she glanced down, shy. “I want to see my _friend_.”

He had always brushed off her requests before, and this had been the first time he seemingly considered it. That last word of her statement seemed to seal the deal. 

“Are you certain? Are you very certain?”

“I’ve only been asking for three whole months!”

“Come to the mirror, child,” he said in a tremulous voice, and she eagerly did as he bid her. 

She smiled a little. She’d always thought he was behind the mirror — it seemed hollow, even if she couldn’t find any sort of latch or mechanism to open it from this side. 

The glass slid back dramatically and for the briefest of seconds she felt something was very wrong, but suddenly all thoughts faded to the back of her mind as she focused on one thing and one thing only. 

His eyes. 

There was nothing wrong! There never had been. How silly of her to think otherwise! Everything was fine — better than fine! She was finally gazing into the eyes of her beloved maestro. 

And what eyes! She felt she could look at them forever. Deep amber. Dark honey. Sharp cognac. Flickering candlelight. 

For a brief second — and she thought this was what had frightened her at first — his eyes seemed to glow in the darkness like a cat, like a wolf. But he was just a man! Of course his eyes didn’t glow. Or if they did, well — could he help that? The light from her dressing room must have caught at a strange angle, perhaps he had unique eyes or some condition — perhaps that was why he had hid away from her all this time, suppose bright lights hurt his sensitive eyes? The poor man!

So entranced by those golden animal eyes was she, that she took no notice of the rest him - his inhuman height, the preternatural pallor of the skin of his neck below his stark white mask that served as a face, that peculiar stench that hung about him like a shroud, the way his hands seemed deathly and arachnid and how the wrapping of his rotted leather gloves did little to hide their shape and form- 

No. She saw only his eyes, his wonderful eyes, and her own stared back at them, wide and unblinking as she took his offered hand and let him pull her into the darkness that surrounded him. 

Ever after she struggled to fully recall her first voyage to his lair. 

She remembered the mist, the swirling mist upon a vast, glossy lake that was lit from within, a sparkling blue water that roiled as though it contained a creature, as it itself were alive and breathing, thinking. She remembered the darkness pressing in against the almost tangible cocoon of golden light given off by his lantern, and somehow she knew the darkness would be stiflingly warm just as the light was oddly chilling and cold, though she didn’t dare let any of the inky blackness touch even the hem of her skirt. 

There was the distant memory of winding spiral staircases like a giant seashell, though she could only recall floating around the steps and not what was surely a strain on anyone’s feet should they have to climb them. 

She was certain, though she knew not how, that there had been arms, golden, moving arms, reaching through the marbled stone of the wall and holding candelabras that flickered and glowed. Erik had taken no notice of them, so she had tried to ignore them as well. 

The memory of how they arrived there, so far beneath the earth, seemed a jumbled heap of thoughts and emotions and sensations - so too did her time spent in his abode, once they reached it. 

There was a house, a charming little house under there, and he brought her in and sat her by the fire and he played the violin for her and they sang together and sometimes, much later on, when she was on the verge of falling asleep, she had the distinct impression that as they had been singing he had wrapped his arms around her, his touch feather-light, and that at some point he had picked her up and held her in his arms. She was never certain if that had actually happened, but deep in the back of her mind, she desperately hoped it had, that she hadn’t merely imagined it. She would be hesitant to ever admit it out loud, but she wanted him to hold her. 

It got fuzzy from there, and the next thing she clearly remembered was waking up on the couch in her dressing room, groggy and slightly cold. He had left a large shawl that she’d never seen before over her for warmth, and one of them had removed her shoes. There was a slight tingle in her neck — a pinched nerve, no doubt, and nothing else — from falling asleep on the couch and she rubbed her palm at it until it went away. When she glanced at herself in the mirror, she looked pale, but she was smiling. 

She thanked him, in their next lesson. She had enjoyed the time spent together with him, to finally have seen him. She didn’t tell him, but she couldn’t quite remember what he looked like, besides his beautiful eyes. All she remembered was that she’d felt safe with him, safe and warm. 

He paused for a moment, thinking. 

“Christine,” he said, cautious. “Would you like to come with me again?”

“Of course, Erik!” she smiled. 

The mirror was pulled back, and she steeled her mind to look closely at the rest of him and actually remember, but as soon as she saw those eyes — and her own were inexplicably drawn to them — it was like her own intentions fell away and melted like a sugar cube in hot tea. 

The journey underground was just as magical as before, and she reveled in the experience. By the time they arrived in his lovely little house, however, she noticed he seemed rather agitated. 

He sat her down in a plush chair by the fireplace, then got her a cup of tea which tasted oddly sweet, then fretted as he watched her sip it. 

“Does it taste alright?” he asked anxiously. 

She swallowed the sugary liquid. 

“It’s fine,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

He stared into the fire a moment. 

“I don’t often make tea — I don’t have guests, you know — I was afraid I hadn’t made it right,” he admitted.

She set the cup down on its plate and placed it on the end table beside her. 

“No, it’s fine. Erik,” she hesitated, then added gently— “I think you’re upset about something other than tea.”

She had been around her strange angel long enough to know when he was bothered by something almost as well as he could sense her own moods. 

Erik turned to study her intently with shining eyes. She sat there, in his chair, in his domain, under his thrall, looking up at him with such tenderness and concern, and it tore at him. For the first time in his incredibly long life, Erik felt the stifling and unbearable press of guilt. He had warped her precious mind with his wickedness — he’d lied to her in the most awful of ways, pretending to be good when he was in fact a mere beast who was so far removed from humanity that he didn’t even know how to brew a cup of tea for her. He felt great tears welling up in his eye sockets. 

“Christine,” he asked, his trembling. “Do you love your poor Erik?”

A flash of confusion went across her face. 

She considered this. Did she? He was the person she most enjoyed spending time with, he always made her smile. She looked forward to hearing from him, not just for his excellent instruction, but because of who he was. 

“I do,” she said honestly, eagerly. “You’re a very dear friend to me, Erik.”

He choked back a sob in his throat and wrung his hands. 

“Christine has not even seen Erik’s face,” he reminded her. 

She pressed her lips together. 

“I don’t think it matters,” she said slowly, choosing her words carefully as she eyed the blank mask that only showed his glowing eyes. “A person is more than what they look like.”

“If— if Erik took his mask _off_ — please, Christine, be honest, now — if Erik took his mask _off_ , would you still love him? Would you?”

“Of course,” she said, giving a little shrug as though it were the easiest answer in the world. 

Erik desperately longed for these words to be true. He had shunned humanity not only out of necessity but for myriad other reasons as well — how he despised humans, crawling across the face of the earth like they were more than what they were! But Christine — darling Christine — she was a human who he actually cared about, she was more than just a vessel full of a potential meal — to find out that underneath layer after layer of spell and thrall that she actually hated and feared him — oh, that would destroy him more surely than the fiery rays of the sun. 

He took a cautious step towards her, sitting down in the chair next to her. His hands clutched tightly at the armrests, his nails likely leaving little indentations in the wood — were his knuckles not already white, they surely would have been by now. At last he slowly turned to meet her gaze and raised a single hand up to caress the edge of his mask. 

“Are you quite certain?” 

She merely smiled and nodded. 

“Erik, just take it off. I don’t mind.”

He swallowed hard and slowly removed it with a shaking hand, his hideous visage at last bared to her. 

Christine stared at the sunken eyes and the gnarled lips that barely covered a set of fangs and the far-too-pale skin stretched over his skull and the hole where a nose should have been but most definitely was not, and she took a sip of her tea. 

“There,” she said with a little smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Erik let the mask drop to the floor in shock. Did she truly—?

And then. He noticed that her gaze had never even left his eyes. 

He leaned back in the chair and wailed. 

She accepted him — because that was what he wanted her to do. All this time he had thought that even a scrap of acceptance would warm his chilled heart, but he had been wrong — this sickening, coerced acceptance was somehow worse than being hated, and the realization hit him with a ferocity he had not been expecting. It was fake, all of it was fake, and he hated it more than he’d ever hated anything. 

Christine looked slightly fazed by the display occurring in front of her. She took another sip of tea and hoped whatever was currently happening would resolve itself quickly. 

“Oh, _Christine_ -!” he sobbed, and slid out of his chair, falling to his knees. “How could I have done this to you, my poor dear?”

He crawled on his knees until he was practically leaning against her legs, and she pulled back from him as much as she could, her pounding. Those trembling, skeletal fingers reached up to her face, colder than ice as he touched her, gently grasping her chin to turn her face to look at him. He could see the shadow of fear in the pools of her eyes, and it struck him like an arrow through the chest. 

“I’ve taken away your choice — I’ve bent you to my will — I’ve _forced_ you, Christine don’t you see—?” he cried as he begged her, as though through the confession of sins against her he was desperately seeking absolution. 

“Erik, stop, you’re frightening me!” she turned her eyes away from him even though she was unable to move her head. 

“Because I am the beast that kidnapped you!” he spit, and scrambled to his feet, putting distance between the two of them now. 

She replayed his words in her head, trying to make sense of them and their meaning. 

“You are not a beast—“ she tried feebly. 

“You know only what I let you know,” he snapped, his back to her as he balled his fists and rubbed them against his eyes. “You think only what I let you think — if you have any love for me at all, it’s because I made you feel it. It isn’t real. None of it. None of your tender emotions and saccharine daydreams and silly smiles — it’s only what I’ve compelled you to imagine you feel, and like a naïve little fool you _believe_ it.”

“I know my own mind,” she protested, frowning, and though her voice was clear and strong, a shiver went through her very soul with the fear that maybe she really _didn’t_ after all. 

“Do you?” he asked, his voice cold. “If you and I met on equal terms, would you still love your poor Erik? Or would you shrink from him? Would you scream at seeing his excuse of a face? Would you shun him, as all the others always do? How could you live with the knowledge of what he is?” 

“Erik! Stop it! You’re being ridiculous!” she chided him but felt the strange sensation that something was swiftly unraveling, something that had once been stitched and knitted together so tightly was about to fall apart completely, and it made her feel jumpy and cold. 

“Am I?” 

He turned slowly to face her, and her breath stuck in her throat. She saw him — truly saw him — for the very first time, and just like he’d said, she wanted to scream.


	2. Chapter 2

There was something wrong with him. She could explain it no other way - there was something _wrong_ about him, all of him. He was something that reasonably shouldn’t exist, and yet he did, and every part of her mind was screaming at her that something was wrong about that. 

She looked away. She couldn’t help it. 

He was so very clearly animated, very clearly alive — but he looked as though he was dead. He was like something in the stories her Papa had tried to scare her with as a child. She’d never believed such a thing could exist, never been scared by the tales and legends, but now— 

Now she couldn’t stop trembling. 

She blinked hard against the stinging in her eyes, and Erik let out a long exhale. 

“I knew it,” he said with a flat finality. 

“No!” she insisted, still not able to look at him, trying to pretend that she wasn’t crying. “No, this doesn’t change anything! You’re wrong!”

“Am I, Christine? Could you love this loathsome gargoyle that stands before you now? Could you ever look past his flaws and _truly_ love him? Could you?”

His tone had changed from mocking to pleading, and when she dared another glance in his direction she found he was on the floor again, dangerously close to her and staring up at her with tearful hope masking a deep despair. Her brow furrowed deeply as she realized he was reaching a talon-tipped hand to place on her knee, and she jerked back before the offending appendage made contact. 

Hurt flashed across his terrible face and he pulled back. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whimpered, and she felt her heart breaking. 

In that moment, he was no longer the thing lurking around the corner. He was her maestro, her friend, and he was hurting. 

“Oh, Erik,” she sighed, and reached her hands out to him. 

At this he completely broke down, burying his face in the skirts of her lap, his hands clenching around the fabric that covered her knees. He sobbed and sobbed and she hummed a lullaby to him, her hands cradling his skull and gently threading through his sparse hair. She continued to hum and stroke his hair until his tears stemmed. He was so happy to touch and be touched of her own volition. He didn’t even notice her eyes were scrunched tightly shut the entire time. 

Once he managed to dry his eyes and get to his feet, he took her upstairs again, shamefaced and silent. 

Now that he’d broken his enchantment over her, she was shocked to discover where he truly lived. It was no cozy cottage under the earth — it was a lair carved out of the rock and limestone, practically a cave. It was lit with dripping candelabras and there was a fireplace of sorts, along with some curtains hung here and there to provide makeshift rooms. There were two chairs settled near the fireplace, and a few shelves with books and odds and ends on them. One of the items on the shelf looked to be a bone, and vaguely human-sized. She shivered and looked away. 

The trip above was stark and different from the others. The lake was no longer blue, but black like ink, like thick oil, and instead of the gentle, undulating current it was now deathly still. The mist that had seemed so magically now only made her think of noxious fumes from a scientific experiment gone terribly wrong. 

She wrapped her arms around herself, sidestepping the loose stones on the pathway that she didn’t remember seeing before. She could hear the chatter and squeak of rats, their little claws scrabbling away as they moved about, and she shuddered. 

The light given off by his lantern was weak now, and she wondered if it always had been. He glanced at her every now and then, concern clearly there in those yellow eyes, the only thing she could see of his face now that he had replaced the blank white mask. As soon as she looked at him, he looked away, pretending he hadn’t been looking at her at all. 

She didn’t know what to make of the whole situation. 

It was too much. It simply couldn’t be. He was nothing but a man — there could be no other explanation. He was just a very, very ugly man. He had some kind of skin condition, or he’d been in an accident, or he was simply very unfortunate from birth — but there were surely explanations for everything. Surely he wasn’t—

She managed to almost convince herself, then glanced at him again, and her half-believed excuses shattered like a mirror under a hammer. 

There was no denying that he was not human. 

She looked away, trying to pretend again. But there was no pretending away this knowledge. 

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, then wrinkled her nose. There was the horrible scent of damp and decay all around, but it seemed stronger the closer she got closer to Erik. She looked at him, placing a hand over her nose, and he nervously began to fidget, as though he could tell what the problem was and was terribly embarrassed by it. She was caught between revulsion and pity. He couldn’t help that he stunk. Probably. 

They didn’t speak until they arrived in her dressing room. Here, with the gas lamps still blazing the light dazzling after having been underground so long, she dared not look at him. He would be too grotesque, she was certain. 

She cleared her throat, searching for something — anything — to say. 

“I— I’m—“

“Are you going to tell anyone?” he asked softly, defeated. 

She was silent for a long moment. 

“No,” she said finally. 

“Because you fear what I’d do to you?”

She fidgeted. If he’d wanted to harm her, he likely would have gotten it over with already. 

“No.”

“Christine, I—“

“I just need a little time to think,” she said, her voice thick with emotion, and she took a step towards the door to leave. “Please just let me have some time by myself for a while.”

She dared to glance over at him. He was still behind the mirror, not daring to set a foot on the carpet of her room, and he was leaning over, leaning against the stone wall of the secret tunnel. His shoulders shook silently, and she realized that he was crying. 

He looked all too human, doubled over in grief, his golden eyes swimming in tears. Was he capable of feeling the kinds of things she felt? Longing? Anguish? Love? In that moment, there seemed nothing that distinguished them from each other. He, too, it seemed, possessed a heart that could be broken as easily as hers, and currently his seemed to be in pieces on the ground. 

Before, she couldn't bear to look at him due to his monstrous form, but now, it was his humanity that frightened her. 

“I’m sorry!” she cried, and turned and ran out the door. 

She wasn’t certain if the howl of despair she heard was from him, or from her, or if it was only in her mind. 

She found her mind returning to it over and over the next few days — she could scarcely think of anything else. Every time she closed her eyes she could see that face — so distorted, deformed, it was hardly a face — and when she tried to fall asleep after a long day of rehearsals, her mind would take her back to his unending world of night, that lair so far under the earth where he lived like a rat, like a worm. It shook her to the very core of her being. What had she been conversing with, taking lessons from—?

She finally had to face the stark truth of it all. Her world had been turned upside down and everything she had believed had been challenged. 

And yet— 

Was he not still her Erik? Was he not still the thing — the _man_ — who had inquired after her often, who had filled her spirit with that strange sweet sound, the one who had brought the joy and beauty of music back into her life when she had thought it gone forever? 

What had really changed?

She knew she should be mad that he had hypnotized her, that he had seemingly lured her to his lair. Except— 

After spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about it, she came to recognize that she had wanted to go with him. She’d already asked to see him, she wanted to see him — she wanted to spend time with him, wanted to go to his home with him, even before he had cast his thrall over her with his eyes. He had hypnotized her, yes, but he hadn’t forced her to go with him as he so clearly feared. She had wanted to, and all he had done was make it easier. 

She had to tell him. But how? 

She waited for hours in front of her dressing room mirror, staring at it till she thought might go crazy from looking at her own reflection for so long. She called out for him, she sang for him, she pried her little fingers around the edges of the frame to try to learn the secret of opening it, and all to no avail. 

She very nearly considered leaving it at that. He was gone, it seemed, and he wasn’t coming back, apparently willing to call this the end of her training and their tentative friendship. But she wasn’t ready to give up that easily. 

Trying to keep out of view of anyone else, she crept up to Box Five one evening. 

The door was unlocked, and she slipped inside, shutting it softly behind her. She looked around the dark box, squinting her eyes at the corners, trying to see if she was alone. The silence felt like a blanket overtop of her. 

“Erik?” she whispered, and the word seemed to fall like a stone to the thick red carpet. 

The only reply was silence. She twisted her hands a little, a wave of nerves washing over her, and then it passed. She sat down in one of the chairs, looking out to the dark and empty theater below her. 

“What are you doing here, child?”

She jumped just slightly, finding Erik now sitting in the chair next to her. He was as finely dressed as any gentleman who ever came to the opera, from his stark white gloves covering his clawed hands right down to his shoes with velvet bows over the toes, of which the polished leather shone softly in the darkness. 

He, too, stared out to the empty stage, as though there were a show going on that he was watching intently. She stared at him now that he was here, and he shifted nervously under her gaze. 

“I was looking for you,” she told him softly. 

“Why? To reprimand me? To kill me—“

“To talk to you.”

“What could you possibly have to talk about with a monster,” he said flatly. 

She smoothed out the layers of her skirts. 

“Well, about when my next lesson will be, for one,” she said evenly. 

He looked at her, surprised, though his mask showed no emotion. 

“You are not— you don’t— but I—“ he sputtered. 

“I have found myself falling in love with music again,” she admitted. “And I am loath to let that go out of my life. No one inspires my voice — my _soul_ — like you do, Maestro.”

“Christine,” he warned. “You’ve seen what I am — how can you still— _knowing_ —“

She looked him square in the eye. 

“Your face doesn’t bother me, Erik.”

They were both silent a long time, staring at each other. She was daring him to back down, and he was waiting for the lie to prove itself evident, but it never did. He looked away first, back to the stage, and then slowly, she did as well. 

They both knew it was not merely a face they were each speaking of. 

Christine had seen what he was, realized what he was capable of, knew now what he did in the shadows, and she had not minded. His mind was reeling. He suspected a trap, but if this blissful feeling was a trap, he would gladly let it be his downfall and he would thank her for it with his dying breath. 

“How did you know where to find me?” he asked, dazed. 

“Everyone knows Box Five is haunted,” she replied easily. 

Too surprised to do anything else, Erik laughed out loud. Christine smiled wryly, glancing over at him. 

“Erik,” she asked a little wistfully when he had finished laughing. “Why did you take your thrall off me? You could have left it at that. I wouldn’t have known the difference, before. I’m sure I would have said — or done — anything you wished. But— but you removed your hold on my mind. You let me see. Why?”

Erik became solemn all at once. He looked down at his shoes and anxiously laced his spindly gloves fingers together. 

“I could have,” he said quietly. “But that’s not what I wanted. I want— I’ve found myself wanting something from you that I’ve never wanted — never _needed_ — before, something I can’t get from you under a thrall. I want you to want me, to come to me, with your own free will. I want the parts of you that only you can give someone, things that must be _given_ , things that I can’t simply _take_ from you.”

She considered this. 

“And what if I hadn’t come back? What if, in doing so, you lost all of me?”

He shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting to her then away. 

“That was a risk I was willing to take. I had not realized until we were in the moment, but — having you as a mere automaton was worse than not having you at all. If you saw me and ran — well, at least I knew where we stood. Having you constantly under my spell — I would always be haunted by the thought that you desperately _wanted_ to run but _couldn’t_.”

“I see. Well, I’m not running now,” she said calmly. 

“I noticed,” he said, his voice hopeful as he leaned in ever so slightly. 

And then she did what he had so longed she might do one day. She looked him right in the eyes — of her own free will! — and smiled at him. 

They resumed their lessons. It was slightly awkward at first, but they had too good of an existing rapport for any awkwardness to linger very long. He seemed to treat and think of her just the same, and she— 

She needed a bit of an adjustment. For so long he’d posed as an angel, and she’d assumed he was only a man. It was rather ironic, she thought, that his was the closer approximation — he was not from heaven, but he was certainly not a mortal man. But if he wasn’t a man, and he wasn’t an angel, was he—?

But no. Erik was no monster, not to her. She couldn’t think of her kind maestro that way. He was not human, it was true. She liked to roll the concept over in her mind, that he was simply another species that hadn’t been discovered yet, that his myriad oddities were normal for him, just as how the perfectly normal wings of a bird were so strange to a mouse. 

What was this creature that sat before her as she drank her cup of tea? With his chilling golden eyes and spindly fingers and too-long limbs and thin lips and too-sharp teeth and too-cold skin? How different from herself, yet how ordinarily normal for him! Surely her own plump cheeks and warm, pink skin and glossy curls looked just as foreign to him. No, her Erik could never be a monster. 

She loved to watch him play the piano, captivated by how he left his gloves on to muffle the click-clack of his curved nails against the keys, though neither his gloves nor his nails seemed to hinder him from wrenching the most exquisite music out of the instrument. He hunched over the lump of wood and wire and ivory and with those few base materials he transmuted the most unearthly music. It was bliss, those moments she spent listening to him play. 

The more time she spent in his lair, the more she tried to get him to feel as comfortable around her as she felt around him. 

“Erik,” she told him sleepily, lounging on one of his giant plush chairs, her eyes half closed. “Take off your mask. It can’t be good for your skin to have it on so long.”

Erik hesitated, reaching up slowly to place both palms on either side of the mask, then slowly removing it, inch by inch, staring at her to gauge her reaction. 

“I don’t mind, really,” she huffed, rolling her eyes. 

He removed it fully, and looked at her dubiously. 

She smiled at him, a strange feeling of warmth beginning to go through her, the world growing fuzzy at the edges. Suddenly she realized and blinked hard, scowling. 

“Erik!” she cried, irritated. “Stop! I told you I didn’t want that anymore. I don’t need it.”

He looked away, ashamed, and she felt the sensation of a cup of cold water being dumped over her head as the spell broke. She sniffed and leaned back in the chair again. 

“That’s better,” she nodded. 

She supposed he was merely trying to put her at ease, or perhaps he didn’t think she was being truly truthful with him about his face, but after that he never tried to hypnotize her without her approval again. 

She studied his face curiously on the times when he wasn’t wearing the mask. It was terribly skull-like, but what always drew her attention were the fangs, those curled, curved teeth that glinted curiously in candlelight. The deformity of his lips prevented them from ever truly being out of view, much to his chagrin and her interest. She ran her tongue over the edges of her own teeth as she looked at his, wondering what it must feel like. Was it very terrible, to have teeth like that? 

It wasn’t just his teeth that set him apart. She found herself staring at his ears quite often, too, at their odd shape that came to a point at the end. What she liked best of all was seeing his ears turn an almost-human shade of pink when he realized she was looking at him. He was shy, often embarrassed around her, and it had taken weeks for him to realize that she was looking because she was interested in him and not because he was repulsive to her. He seemed to grow more confident once he realized this, and no longer tried to shirk away from her gaze or lean over to disguise his height. She was the only person who had ever allowed him to simply _be_ , and he loved her endlessly for that. 

She, too, began to grow more comfortable around him — around what he was. Looking at him was easier to cope with than smelling him, but eventually that, too, became just another part of him that was _him_. 

She could still remember a day that she and her Papa had taken a walk in the woods and they had come across a fox’s den. The fox was not there at the time, but it’s home smelled so strongly of _fox_ and Papa had said that this was how the animal smelled, too. That sharp, pungent scent was still seared in her brain, the smell that had made her cover her mouth and nose and gag — the smell that other foxes found alluring and seductive. 

She tried not to breathe deeply around Erik so as to not gag and offend him, and she wondered if she would find this scent irresistible if she were a female of his own species. Over time she found she went slightly nose-blind to the smell, and ceased to realize just how overpowering it was. She was quickly reminded one day, however, after she had spent and evening there in his lair with him — she’d fallen asleep on one of the big chairs by the fire, wrapped in some blankets of his, and he’d slunk off to sleep in his coffin, and she pretended he was sleeping in anything but a coffin, and in the morning he escorted her upstairs like a gentleman — and when she saw Meg for the first time since returning up above, Meg had pinched her nose shut and leaned away from Christine, furrowing her brow at her. 

“Christine, what the fuck? Did you drag something out of the river and roll in it?”

“No!” Christine had cried, scandalized. “Why would you say that?”

“You stink like you haven’t showered in _weeks_!”

“It’s not that bad,” she muttered, embarrassed, and mentally made plans to shower as soon as possible and to always keep a little vial of perfume with her, just in case. 

But even his strong smell didn’t stand in the way of her spending an increasing amount of time with him. 

She spent hours of her free time with him in his lair, playing card games and singing songs not for a show or audition but just for the sake of singing. He told her marvelous stories of distant lands he had visited, and with the help of his special skills she stared, starry-eyed, at the empty space before her and could almost swear she was actually in the story he was telling. She was never certain how much of his stories were invented and what was really true, but they were all so terribly fascinating that she didn’t care if they were real or not. 

_If_ they were real — and he had so many sensual details included that she was hard pressed to say it all hadn’t happened — then her Erik had conversed with shahs and princesses and knights, he had traveled from snowy mountain peaks to lush jungles to arid, sun-scorched deserts to the salty sea and everything in between. She shivered with anticipation of their story nights — listening to them was like living them. 

She began to eat dinner with him as well — or rather, she would eat her dinner while he watched her with a smile and drank a large glass of wine ( _was_ it wine?). He never seemed to eat anything — anything she ever saw, at least, besides the wine which he produced from a mysterious source in a room towards the back of his lair. She preferred to drink water. 

She loved spending time with him and was often intensely curious about him and his life. Luckily for her, he seemed beyond pleased to host her in his home and to humor her in her questions, though she did try to not pry too deeply into anything he likely didn’t want to reveal. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder about her strange maestro. 

“How did you become this?” she asked softly one night as they sat before the blazing hearth. 

He paused, thinking. 

“How did I become _what_ , Christine?” he asked carefully. 

She looked down and pursed her lips. 

“Have you always been... how you are now?” she tried. “Did something... happen? Change you?”

He tilted his head. 

“Erik has always been himself, child. Ever since he was born.”

“Ah, I see,” she said weakly. “Was your mother... the same?”

“I never knew my mother,” he replied easily enough, as though he were remarking in the state of the weather. “I have always been on my own.”

“But surely you were a child at some point—“

“Yes,” he replied slowly. “But that does not mean a mother raised me.”

“Oh.”

It was the most they ever discussed his differences. She didn’t need to fully know what he was to know how she felt about him. 

He was very dear to her. She could scarcely imagine her life without him, without his odd little jokes and awkward grin and the utter uniqueness of him. Yes, it was true he had a penchant for, well— apparently eating people — but could he really be judged by the standards of men when he himself was not human and never had been? 

She tried to turn a blind eye to the various little trinkets she’d see in his home, a cuff link she’d noticed on a patron a few days ago now on his table, or a gaudy hat she’d seen an aristocrat wearing the day before. Sometimes it would be silver pocket watches she knew used to be in the possession of a stagehand — _former_ stagehand, now, it appeared — suddenly tucked away in Erik’s own pocket. She tried her best to pretend that she didn’t know where these new objects came from, but on occasion there was simply no ignoring it — such as when a recently retired manager seemed to have retired from the current plane of existence. 

She had heard the rumors whispered by the ballet rats, and confronted him over it during a rehearsal when she found a few moments to get away. She darted off to Box Five, making certain no one was following her, and snuck quietly inside the unlocked door. It was never locked — everyone else was too terrified of the Ghost’s wrath to enter. 

“They’ll be wanting you on stage in twenty minutes, child,” he mused to her as she sat down in the chair next to him. 

“Poligny is missing,” she told him, meeting his eye. 

He tilted his head, his mask giving away no emotion. 

“Reyer tried to contact him, but he hasn’t received any response, and it’s been over a week now,” she continued. 

“He was a very old man, Christine. Sometimes things happen,” he said with a shrug. 

“Was?”

“He hasn’t been the manager for five months, two weeks, six days, and fourteen hours,” he reminded her. 

She wrinkled her nose at his strange way of keeping time. 

“Erik — where is Poligny?”

He motioned vaguely with his hands to the air around them, as though Poligny was now tiny particles floating on the breeze and lingering in the air. 

“What happened to him?” she insisted, her gaze at him firm. 

He placed his hands on his hips and sighed. 

“He ceased to be,” he said simply. 

“Because of you?”

“What would you have me say, Christine?”

“The truth,” she blurted out. 

“The truth? All creatures must eat to survive — that is the truth.”

She looked away. 

“What would you have me do?” he pressed. “Would you rather I not? Would you rather I simply starve to death? Would that please you?”

“Erik—“ she pleased wrapping her arms around herself, rubbing her hands across them to try and remove the chill that had suddenly settled upon her. 

“Erik could do so if you wish. Do you want him to do that?” he pressed on, slightly peeved at the sudden bout of _morals_ she was having, saddened by her realization of a disgusting truth that was clearly weighing heavily on her pretty little head as she struggled to accept it. “If you want him to, he can—“

“I want you to be careful,” she said earnestly, surprising him. 

He blinked. 

“I want you to be careful to avoid detection, Erik. If someone found out about you—“ 

She looked at him with such heartbreaking concern. He didn’t know what to do with it. 

“I’m scared of what they’d do to you,” she whispered mournfully. 

He rubbed a gloved hand across the back of his neck. 

“I— I’m always careful, my dear—“ he stuttered, not sure how to reply. “I’m very careful. I always have been. They haven’t found me for hundreds of years, or when they have, I’ve always managed to escape...”

She nodded, looking away, looking unhappy, and he trailed off as she worried her teeth into her plump bottom lip and his eyes were uncontrollably drawn to the sight. 

“Still, the poor dears,” she sighed. “Do they suffer very much?”

“Oh, no! Not at all, Christine!” he shook his head vehemently. “They’re perfectly content when it happens! I just put my thrall on them, you see— they don’t mind a bit! Perfectly peaceful!”

She looked at him hopefully. 

“Oh?”

“Oh yes. Why, they’d scream and make a horrid racket otherwise!”

“Oh,” she said, deflating a little. 

She dearly wanted it to be true — she didn’t want to think about it, otherwise. The world was already so cruel, she didn’t want to think of Erik adding to the cruelty any more than he had to. She couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not — did he truly make their last moments pleasant, or was he merely humoring her? He was quite capable of doing so, she knew from experience that he was. But _did_ he? She felt guilty about it, but she decided to believe that he did, because she wanted to. She wanted to think he wouldn’t lie to her, wanted to think that he wasn’t _that_ much of a monster—

She wanted to think a lot of things, and his reply had given her the plausible deniability to do so, so she did. 

Besides, was he so very different from very many of the men up above, human men? Men went off to fight in wars and to kill, and for what? Men fought duels in the streets for _honor_ , as though there were something honorable about murder. Was Erik so very different? Was he so very bad? Sometimes she could work her mind up enough that it all seemed perfectly reasonable. Sometimes. 

It might make her wicked, it might make her selfish, but being selfish was a luxury she had previously never been allowed by the world — she wanted to overlook his flaws more than anything, because he was sweet to her. He ordered baskets of flowers sent to her apartment every week, tacky and overly sentimental arrangements that made her laugh and grimace in turn, but no one else had ever sent her flowers before, and it made her feel warm inside. No one else had ever stopped to notice the little slips in her facade and ask her if she was feeling okay. No one else besides her few family members had ever told her she would amount to something without an expectation of getting something from her in return. No one else cared if she made it back to her apartment safely at night, no one else offered to escort her as she walked the dark streets by herself. No one but Erik. 

He was respectful of her, too — or as respectful as he could be, all things considered. Sometimes he liked to stand a little too close, which she supposed she didn’t mind too much. Sometimes during a lesson he’d reach out and wrap a lock of her hair around his finger as he continued to explain what she needed to do, half of his mind still focused on music but the other half clearly in awe of her. It was a little disconcerting at times, but he never sought to take it further, so she never asked him to stop. 

She was certain he’d stop if she asked — at least she thought she was. All evidence seemed to point to it being the likely outcome. 

One day she was sitting in a chair by the fire when he came and joined her. He kept glancing up over the edge of his book to look at her, his eyes bright with anticipation. 

“Christine,” he asked, leaning forward and licking his lips. “May I touch your skin?”

She stared at him, at a loss. 

“No,” she said finally. 

He slouched down in his chair, looking surprised and hurt at being denied. 

“Oh,” he said, blinking. “Okay.”

A little put out by his strange request, she tried to go back to her book but found her mind could no longer properly focus. She glanced up at Erik, who was now staring longingly at the bare bits of skin not covered by her dress. Her brow furrowed. Why did he want to touch her? Did her skin feel so very different than his own? If had worded his request in a less off-putting manner — _may I hug you, my dear?_ — perhaps she would have agreed, but as it stood, she’d rather not. To his credit, he did not ask again, nor did he try to touch her anyway or try to hypnotize her into accepting, but he did make it perfectly clear as he sat with his arms crossed and his eyes pleading that he still wished she’d change her mind. She didn’t relent, and he seemed rather grumpy for the rest of her visit, but when she saw him again the next day he was as polite and kind as ever. 

Besides that very first night when she was almost certain he’d held her — and more — he refrained from touching her without permission. A questioning look before placing a hand on her back during a lesson on breathing, an apology if he accidentally brushed her fingers when handing her something — he was careful around her, but she could tell that he longed to simply reach out and touch her. 

She didn’t know why that made her feel so conflicted. She shouldn’t want his touch, want _him_ in the ways that she did. And yet — could she even count the times that she’d stood a littler nearer than necessary, let her hand ‘accidentally’ touch his? How often had she glanced at him as they sat and read, secretly wishing she could sit across his lap? 

It was wrong. It was so very wrong. He wasn’t even human! 

But she could tell that he wanted it too. He could even tell that _she_ wanted it, and it confused him to no end — she could tell from the odd little glances he’d give her, the lack of understanding that furrowed his brow as she made all the pretenses of a coquettish display only to pull back at the very last minute. He didn’t understand, but neither did he press the issue. 

He had spent a great deal of time around humans, but this — this was new to him. He had seen couples, married and courting, yes, but never, ever had he had any real experience in it. He was terrified of hurting her somehow, and there were so very many ways he could. He was not so very different from a mortal man, not where it really mattered, not in this regard — he wanted her to be his wife. He had not said the words aloud — he feared to say them, lest she run from him and never come back. But he wanted her, and badly. He wanted to hold her so closely that there was no space between them, no telling where he ended and she began, he wanted to taste her in every possible way, he wanted her to belong entirely to him and him alone just as he so clearly belonged to her. He’d never experienced such an ache before in his entire life, and it consumed him. 

Though he never brought it up, she could tell that he wanted more from her. Part of her wanted to give it to him, to offer herself freely to him, but each and every time something held her back. She wanted it, but it wasn’t what she was supposed to want, and the image of what her life should be instead of what it was distorted her vision like a broken and warped mirror. 

Though she felt she could never admit — to herself or to him — her romantic feelings, she was certain that she loved him dearly as a companion and mentor. Through his steadfast guidance, she began to gain the notice of the managers and the directors. 

Concerned about who else might start to notice her, Erik asked to have a talk with her in her dressing room. 

“I’ve been around men my entire life, my dear,” he told her gravely. “I am intimately acquainted with how they think and how they act. I’ve been here at this opera since it was first built — I’ve seen them all, even before I was here, generations of men. They are all the same, Christine.”

She propped her chin on her hands as she leaned her elbows on the arm of the couch in her dressing room, watching him pace the tiny room nervously. After a year of knowing him, it was no longer disturbing to hear him say things like how he’d seen “generations” of men. He’d been alive for hundreds of years, that’s just how it was. 

“The men here... They are not good for you. They will only hamper your career, child — the career we both have put too much work into to be careless with,” he licked his lips and ran his spindly fingers through his dark but greying hair. He turned to face her, his mask forgone, and she could see every emotion there on his strange countenance. 

“Christine,” he said urgently. “I want you to stay celibate. You mustn’t fall in with a patron.”

Her eyebrows flew up, surprised at his frankness. 

“I only want what’s best for you, you must understand,” he insisted desperately, wringing his hands. “A patron will only distract you. They have no good intentions, believe me. No permanent intentions — you are a plaything to them, a distraction to while a few hours away with, and then they’ll move on and forget all about you. You must not fall for it — for them. Christine, if you want the Angel to stay, you must promise him that there will be no other men in your life.”

She pressed her lips together, mulling over his words. He looked nearly on the verge of tears, stressed and anxious, not quite able to meet her eye. He was referring to himself in the third person again, and her heart went out to him for it. She half wanted to hug him and assure him that it was okay, but she also half wanted to slap him for daring to impose on her personal life. And yet— 

It was not too outlandish a request, was it not? 

He was correct in some regards, she supposed. The wealthy patrons would never consider making her a wife. The only real path in this world that her Papa and the Professor and Mamma Valerius would smile on was for her to marry, and she would not find that in the arms of a patron. In Erik’s own possessive way, he really was trying to look out for her. 

“Erik—“

He looked up at her, helpless and miserable. If he had a heart, she was certain it would be pounding. In that moment she wondered if he really could just leave her, after all that — if she refused, if she insisted that she would seek the attentions of patrons despite his protests, would he truly leave her? Could he? Looking at him now, she didn’t think so. She nearly wanted to call his bluff and see him grovel and beg and kiss the hem of her dress — he would not leave her, his sweet Christine, no — she was certain he was not capable. 

“I won’t,” she told him instead. 

A look of frightened relief passed over his face. 

“Truly? You— you will commit yourself to music alone?”

“Truly.”

“No men?” he asked, tentative. 

“Just you,” she said with a wry little smile. 

Disbelieving relief bloomed on his face and he smiled, exhaling a long breath as though he’d been holding it for ages. 

“I have something for you—“ he dug in one of his pockets, producing a golden ring which she regarded curiously. 

“I want you to have this,” he said, hastily falling to one knee in front of her, holding the ring out to her. “I want you to wear it, always. Wear it and remember this night, and the vow you made to your Erik.”

She held her cupped palms out and he placed the ring into her hands. She picked it up — a little gold band, simple but lovely — and placed it on the third finger of her right hand. 

“Oh,” he breathed. “I had thought that you might wear it on your other hand.”

She fiddled with it a moment, not able to meet his eyes just yet. 

“What’s wrong with this hand?” she said, finally looking up. 

“Nothing, my dear,” he told her, but she could see his eyes were full of pain. 

She felt a ghost of guilt, but she tried to push it away. 

In all the time she’d known him, Erik was exceedingly particular about words. He needed to be explicitly invited into private rooms, and he always made certain she was comfortable with anything he was about to do before he did it. If she had known his intentions in requesting her celibacy and then in asking her to wear his ring and yet purposely eluded that goal of his, well— 

She was only playing the game the way he played it. If he had wanted a marriage, he should have said the right words to ask for it. 

It did little to ease her conscience. 

“It’s beautiful,” she said, holding her hand out to admire how it glinted on her finger, trying to distract herself from how badly she felt about what she’d just done. 

“I thought of you immediately, when I first saw it,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice as he gazed at it. 

She didn’t ask where he got it from. She already knew. It was from a man — Erik never feasted on women, this she knew — and probably was worn on his little finger, considering how well it fit on her own hand. She wondered if Erik had noticed the ring after he was finished, or if he’d seen the ring and decided on his dinner based on the promise of being able to give it to her after it was done. 

She did not particularly want to know. 

He reached his hand out to hers, ever so gently brushing the tips of his gloved fingers across the little gold band — the most physical boldness he’d shown in a while. Her eyes met his and the world seemed to stand still for a moment. 

“My Erik,” she whispered tenderly, and slowly, so as to not make him flinch, cupped a hand over his cheek, and he melted into the touch like a cat brushing up against its master. 

“Oh, Christine,” he said on a tremulous breath, pushing his face into her hand. 

He suddenly stood, towering over her on the couch, and before she had a chance to fully register what he was about to do, he had pulled her up and into his arms, hugging her tightly, his face buried in the crook of her neck. 

Her eyes widened, first with fear, and then simply from surprise. All she had the presence of mind to do was cling to him, and she did, her own arms having been thrown around his neck. He held her like that for a long moment, and at last she let her eyes slide shut, feeling her heart beat wildly in her chest as she fisted her hands in the fine material of his jacket. 

She could not — would not — marry a vampire, but, _oh_ , how she yearned to be able to place that ring on her other hand as he wanted her to. 

Finally he pulled back, looking slightly surprised at his own action and a little worried. She smiled warmly at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tears in the corners of her eyes. With her standing on the couch, they were practically the same height, and it nearly made her laugh, to finally be eye level with her maestro. He laughed a little too, embarrassed. 

“That matter is settled, I believe,” he chuckled nervously, then picked her up as if she didn’t weigh anything at all and set her feet down on the ground again. 

He patted her on the arm and cleared his throat. 

“Same time tomorrow for your lesson,” he said, and swiftly turned away to leave through the mirror. 

She watched him go, half wanting to ask to go with him, to spend the night in his lair with him, to kiss him, to hug him again — she wasn’t sure what she wanted, exactly, and her hesitation lasted a moment too long, and he was gone. She chewed on her lip and stared at the now closed mirror wistfully, unable to name the emotion currently twisting in her heart. 

Erik had to pause several times on his journey back to his home. He leaned up against the smooth, cool stones of the walls, his legs weak and his face on fire and his chest feeling like it might burst. 

He had touched her! And she hadn’t died! She hadn’t run from him — quite the contrary, in fact. She now wore his ring, almost like a proper little wife — _almost_. 

It was too good to be believed. He kept replaying it on his mind, over and over. She knew what she was doing in not putting the ring on her left hand. He wished it was different, but she was wearing it and she’d sworn celibacy — and she’d allowed his hug. It wasn’t what he’d truly wished for, but it had still turned out very good, all things considered. 

He could still feel the phantom touch of holding her. He wanted to live in that moment forever. He tried very hard to remember how it had happened, how she had reacted — she hadn’t minded, had she? He hoped she hadn’t minded too much. It was not the biggest liberty he had taken with her, but still— he didn’t want her to feel awkward or frightened around him. There was still, even after all this time, a lingering specter of guilt that haunted the back of his mind, thinking about her first night with him in his lair. Did she remember? Did it haunt her too? 

If he could go back and change the past, he’d want to change what he’d done, but he also knew that if given the chance, he’d do the exact same thing all over again. 

He hadn’t meant to do it, hadn’t planned it. But as he’d held her that night, he hadn’t been able to resist taking just a taste. No more than a taste — not enough to harm her or turn her, but enough to know, enough to feel. She’d smiled at him after, her eyes half-hooded, and he’d not done it again, yet the memory of it was enough to haunt him with teasing longing, with intense shame. Would she hate him if she knew? Would she mind? 

But this — this hug — she hadn’t seemed to mind, and it warmed him more than anything. 

They continued their lessons and their friendship, passing the coming months in pleasant companionship. 

Sure enough, as she became a better and more well-known singer, she began to catch the eyes of various men. True to her word, she turned down each one. She started to gain a reputation among the other performers, and rumors began to circulate. So many appealing offers she had rejected — but why? Various theories were cycled through by the ballet rats and the jealous chorus members until finally they landed on one that seemingly had proof — she was already secretly married. 

“Tell me who he is?” Meg pleaded with her one afternoon. 

Christine ducked her head, blushing as she fiddled with her ring. 

“I told you, there’s no one,” she insisted. 

“Whose ring is that?”

“Mine,” she said evasively, and clutched it to her chest. 

“Is it the man who’s been tutoring you? Is that why we can’t see him? Are you married to him?”

“No,” she said, not meeting her friend’s eye. “That’s not why.”

“Meg, you know we can’t see her tutor because he’s the Ghost!” Cecile James snickered. 

“No!” Christine’s face turned bright red. “My tutor is nothing but a man... and we are _not_ married, I assure you.”

“Well, I wish a duke would take notice of _me_ ,” Meg sniffed. “ _I_ wouldn’t turn him down, I’ll tell you that.”

Christine merely smiled. 

“I’ll be sure to send the next one your way,” she teased gently. 

Though she tried her best to quell most rumors, a few still lingered even after weeks of her most vehement denials. Much of her behavior had not changed, but with her newfound popularity, she was suddenly under a microscope. Everyone at the opera house seemed to know of her now, the strange girl who more often than not refused the help of the dressers and left strict instructions that no one was to visit her dressing room at any time. 

She didn’t care too terribly what they all said about her, how they called her odd — she _was_ odd, and she knew it. She cared only what Erik had to say about her, and he could seemingly find no flaw in her — only in her voice. 

Their lessons had never gone so well. She always left them smiling and feeling warm inside, wishing the time spent with him was longer. His gaze would often land on her ring and his lips would twist into a small, unconscious smile at the sight. He often did away with his mask at her request while in her presence. Both of them, it seemed, could be entirely themselves around the other with no fear of judgement. 

Nearly six months after she had first put on her ring — the ring she hadn’t taken off even once ever since — she was given a supporting role in the upcoming show. Not the leading lady as they both wished, but she had two songs of her own, and it would be an excellent stepping stone to bigger and greater things in the near future. 

Erik coached her on everything, from inflection to poise to how to handle the mind games La Carlotta tried to draw her into. Opening night came, and he stood there in the shadows with her where no one could see them. 

She looked up at him, nervous but trusting. 

“You’re going to do wonderful,” he assured her in a whisper, his yellow eyes glittering. 

“I hope so,” she replied quietly, her hand going up to her jeweled throat. 

He placed both his hands on either of her arms, pulling her slightly closer to him. Slowly, gently, he leaned down to touch the smooth flatness of his black mask to the top of her head, in imitation of a kiss. Her breath caught in her throat at the action. 

“I am _certain_ that you will,” he said. 

And with that he let go of her and sank into the shadows. The sound of footsteps echoed to her from just around the corner, and she glanced away to see where they were coming from. When she looked back, Erik was gone, and it was time for her to take her position on stage. 

She swallowed hard as she stood in the semidarkness, waiting for the curtain to rise and the show to start. It was then that she heard his voice in her head, as she often did. 

“ _Are you nervous, child_?”

She didn’t know if he was inside her mind somehow, or if he was simply throwing his voice only to her. She didn’t question it. She never had. 

She gave a little nod. 

“ _There is no reason to be,_ ” he instructed. “ _Forget entirely about anyone else — I want you to sing only for me_.”

She gave a slight nod again, her heart fluttering as the orchestra soared and the curtain rose. 

“ _Sing for me_!” the voice hissed, and she began to sing. 

The performance flew by. Before she knew it, it was intermission, and she was back in her dressing room to change into her next costume with the help of a dresser. She watched her own reflection in the mirror with great curiosity as the young woman helped her unlace the elaborate costume, and wondered if Erik was there now, and if he ever had been before in the times she was undressing, watching her as layer after layer was peeled away, exposing her bare skin and thin cotton under layers. She couldn’t account for the secret hope he really was there, watching. 

Once finished, she thanked the dresser and ran back to the stage, just in time to take her place. The second act flew by as well, and by the end of it, she felt she could swoon right away with the excitement of it all. She took her bow, feeling like she was in a dream, smiling sweetly out at the audience, then made her way back to her dressing room for the final time that night. 

“Your voice was exquisite, child.” 

The heady compliment floated to her from behind her mirror as soon as she set foot in her room. She quickly closed and locked the door, turning to stare breathlessly at where he was hiding. 

“I sang only for you,” she told him earnestly, clasping her hands over her chest as she approached. 

The mirror slid back and he came into view. 

She couldn’t stop thinking of the moment they had shared just before she’d gone on stage, of the press of his mask against her hair, of how if she just said the right words, the words that were on the top of her tongue — _I love you_ — he might recreate the moment again, and this time without his mask. 

“Your voice is such a gift, my dear,” he said tenderly. “No emperor could ask for better—“

A knock came at her door, and she jumped in surprise. A look of betrayal flashed through Erik’s eyes, and she gazed up at him, willing him to please understand. 

“I told my dresser to send away all the visitors,” she insisted truthfully. “I always do.”

The knock came again, and a muffled man’s voice calling her name. 

She bit her lip, hard, and glanced nervously at the door. 

Erik turned cold and aloof, and stepped back inside the mirror, sliding it shut. 

“I’ll send him away,” she promised him quietly. “The only visitor I want is you.”

With one last glance behind her to make certain her maestro was well concealed, she reluctantly opened the door to see who could have possibly had the gall to defy the orders she’d left with her dresser.


	3. Chapter 3

The Vicomte Raoul de Chagny had guessed it was her a handful of minutes into the performance, and a quick look at the program paper for the evening confirmed it. 

Christine Daaé. 

But not the little Christine of his younger years, the shy but sweet and always smiling girl he had known in his youth. This Christine was... _Magnificent_. A _woman_. Sophisticated. And judging from the applause she was receiving, very, very popular. 

An idea bloomed in his mind. 

As soon as the curtain had fallen for the final time, he made his way back to see her. A little uncertain of where to find her, he stopped a ballet rat with mousy hair and pulled her aside. 

“Where can I find Mlle Daaé?” he asked her eagerly. 

The girl looked surprised. 

“Christine doesn’t accept visitors, I’m afraid,” Meg told him apologetically, then gave him a charming smile. “But I am free, and I’d be more than happy to—“

“Where is her dressing room?” 

She frowned. 

“I do not know, Monsieur. I am sorry,” she lied. 

She knew Christine would be peeved if she gave out her whereabouts — she was always strict about not receiving any visitors after a show. 

Raoul left her and began to look for the dressers, thinking they might know. 

“I’d like to see Mlle Daaé,” he told the young woman, who also looked surprised. 

Her eyes widened, and her gaze flashed to a closed dressing room door before looking back at him, not even realizing she’d given away the star’s location. 

“Mlle Daaé does not wish to have any visitors this evening,” she told him politely, bowing a little. 

Raoul shrugged and smiled. 

“But she doesn’t know I want to visit her! Is she back there?” he asked, pointing at the door. 

The dresser looked conflicted. 

“She left me with strict orders to not let anyone bother her. I’m sorry, Monsieur, but she won’t see you.”

Raoul pushed past her and headed for Christine’s door. He could hear muffled talking inside, and he frowned. Had some scoundrel gotten here first? He knocked and called out for her, then knocked again. He knew she was in there, and she had to come out sometime. 

Christine cracked the door open, peering out just slightly. 

He smiled widely. 

“Christine,” he breathed. “Do you remember me?”

She looked as though she’d seen a ghost. 

“Please, Monsieur, I do not wish to entertain any visitors—“ she began meekly. 

Raoul de Chagny. She hadn’t thought of him in ages. And now here he was, at her doorstep, and not at all welcome. 

She tried to close the door, only for him to stick his foot in it, preventing it from closing. She looked down at what he’d done with dismay. 

“You were so beautiful tonight, Lotte,” he told her sincerely, and she cringed to hear the nickname she hadn’t heard in years. 

“What are you doing here, Raoul?”

“Watching the opera, of course!”

She pressed her lips together. 

“Did my dresser send you over?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I want to take you to dinner with me. I have a carriage waiting out front.”

He offered her a hand as though he expected her to go with him that very moment. 

“I—“ she stared at his hand, his large, probably warm, very human hand. “I’m not even dressed yet, Raoul.”

“Ah!” He withdrew his hand. “Five minutes, then! I’ll be waiting!”

She glanced nervously back at the mirror, feeling a pair of unblinking yellow eyes boring into her. 

“I can’t go to dinner with you Raoul, my teacher— he’s very strict. He doesn’t want me out late, or with strange men, especially after shows. He says it’s not good for my voice, you see—“

Raoul laughed. 

“But I’m not a strange man! And besides, it won’t be very late by the time we’re done! Just after midnight! That’s hardly late.”

“He won’t approve—“

“He won’t even know,” he insisted. 

“ _I_ don’t want to,” she said softly. 

His face fell for just a moment, then he grinned again, that boyish, charming grin. 

“Ah, Lotte! You little tease. What a coquette you’ve become, playing hard to get!” He waggled a finger at her. “Five minutes and no more! I’m taking you to dinner!”

He closed the door himself, and she stood on the other side, speechless. 

Feeling terribly uncomfortable, she locked the door and began to pace a little before setting to undressing. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she bowed her head. 

“Help me,” she whispered her plea, and the mirror opened up immediately. 

Erik stepped out and wordlessly helped her undo the laces of her costume, hanging the heavy dress on a hanger while she pulled her dressing gown on over her corset and chemise. 

“Can you take me home with you?” she whispered to him, coming up close. “Please?”

He brushed stray curl off of her shoulder and motioned with his head for her to follow him. Once she was safely behind him in the secret tunnel, he replaced the mirror, and they set off for his lair. 

It was a nearly silent journey for the first half of the trip. She could tell he wasn’t pleased and was oscillating between pretending it hadn’t happened and thinking of reprimanding her for it happening at all. 

“Who is he?” he finally asked, his voice stiff and clipped. 

“A very old friend,” she said, feeling unaccountably guilty. “I haven’t seen him — or had any contact with him — since I was fourteen, Erik. I didn’t know he was coming here. I didn’t know he even knew I still existed.”

“Did you wish to go to dinner with your handsome boy, then?” he sniffed. 

“He’s not my _boy_!” she cried, exasperated. 

Erik took note that she made no mention of him not being _handsome_. 

“Erik, you’re the one I asked to go home with,” she reminded him softly. 

She could practically hear his jaw clenching and unclenching. 

“Are you... fond of him?” he asked ominously. 

She looked down at her feet. 

“He is a vicomte,” she said carefully. “If he goes missing... People will notice.”

“Ah.”

They said no more on the matter — or about anything else — until they arrived in his lair. 

Outside her dressing room door, the vicomte glanced at his gold pocket watch, keeping careful count of the time. As soon as five minutes had elapsed — and not a second more — he turned to knock on her door again. 

“Are you ready?” he asked, his voice cheerful. “Christine?”

He knocked again. 

“It’s dinner time, dear. I hope you’re ready, I’m coming in—“

The room was bafflingly empty when he opened the door. He entered and scratched his head, feeling like a fool as he glanced under the vanity and behind the couch as though she might be hiding there. 

“Christine?” he asked the empty room, at last coming face to face with himself in the large mirror. 

Where had she gone? 

Five stories below the earth, Erik ushered her to the chairs by the fire. 

“What’s his name again? Raoul?”

“Yes.”

Erik hummed. 

“And you know him? From before?”

His questions were beginning to sound less like curiosity and more like something else, and she winced. 

“Yes,” she said again. “But this is the first I’d heard from him since I was a girl.”

“Well, we must find a way to send him away, then,” he mused, half to himself. “I could make him forget all about you, perhaps — a decent alternative to, ah—“ he coughed a little, “I believe you’ll find it more satisfactory to your morals, my dear.”

She frowned a little, looking away. Curiosity of what he’d been up to in the years since she’d seen him were beginning to win out in her mind. 

“We can’t have him coming back,” he insisted. “He has to go away, Christine.”

“Does he?” she asked softly, and his eyes flashed. 

“He does,” he stated. “He’s a distraction. He must go. I wish he’d never showed up at all.”

She hung her head. 

“He doesn’t mean any harm—“

“If I didn’t know better,” he said, his voice bordering on harsh. “I would think you actually wished to see the boy again!”

She said nothing. 

“You don’t, do you?”

Silence. 

“You’ve never had an issue with my request before,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “You’ve never cared about any men before. But this— this _boy_ — suddenly something is different?”

She glanced at the wall, then at the fire, and her lack of reply frightened then infuriated him. 

“You tried to send him away yourself. I saw you, heard you. You don’t like him being here any more than I do. Isn’t that right?”

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it firmly again, remaining silent. The only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire, and, if he listened closely enough, the tremulous and frantic beating of her heart. 

He sat there in the chair made for him, staring across at her as she sat in the other chair, one that was too big for her. She looked like a little doll sitting there, her feet not touching the ground, the voluminous skirt of her dressing gown pooled around her, her eyes swimming with tears as she looked off to the corner of the room and avoided looking towards him. 

But she wasn’t a little doll — she was a person, her own person, and she might one day want things for herself that he didn’t want for her. But—

He was no monster. He _did_ want her to be happy. 

“Why are you crying?” he asked bluntly. 

She sniffled a little. 

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But?”

“But— oh Erik — Raoul is someone I knew when Papa was alive. Seeing him again made me think of all those happy days so long ago.”

“You told him you didn’t want to see him,” Erik said, uneasy. 

She hesitated, and he grew nervous. 

“You told him you didn’t want to go dinner with him,” he said again. 

“I didn’t— I didn’t think you’d—“

“Did you not go because of me? Because I would be mad?”

She chewed at her lip, not looking at him. 

“Christine! Did you want to go to dinner with the boy or not?” he cried, exasperated. 

“It’s just dinner, Angel,” she glanced at him, trying to placate him with her tone. “Going to dinner doesn’t mean anything. He is an old friend, after all. Besides, I didn’t.”

“You wanted to go,” he said, searching her face, trying to understand. “You wanted to go, but didn’t. Why?”

“Because you’d kill him,” she said in the smallest voice, finally looking at him, her eyes teary and accusing. 

It struck Erik to core of his being. 

“You— you think I’d— that I would kill someone important to you? Someone who was a link to your Papa?”

It didn’t matter that it was true, what mattered was the fact that she so utterly believed it. She thought him capable of crushing her like that, of snuffing out the last spark of connection to her happy past. 

She squeezed her hands together, looking down at them with a frown. 

“Please,” she whispered. “I won’t see him again.”

“Christine, you don’t—“ he sighed. “Don’t cry, my dear. It pains me to see you cry, you know that.”

She nodded dutifully and wiped the backs of her hands over her eyes. 

“Do you want to go to dinner with him?” he pressed. 

She didn’t answer. 

“If I promised I wouldn’t kill either of you over it, would you want to?” he tried again. 

She glanced up guiltily. He sighed and sank down in his chair, drumming his fingers on the wooden armrests. 

“I see,” he said, his voice dull. 

“It’s not a crime to be nostalgic, Erik,” she managed in a timid tone. “The last time I saw him, I was at the beach with Papa and— and I was happy.”

“Are you not happy with me, then?”

“Don’t,” she furrowed her brow and looked away. “Don’t do that. Don’t make it like that.”

Erik stood up and began to pace for a few minutes before coming to stand in front of Christine, his expression thoughtful and his eyes shining with that unnatural light. 

“You can see the boy if you wish it, Christine,” he said gently, and just as gently he reached a finger out to tilt her chin up so she was looking at him. He let his thumb trace the vein down the side of her neck, his gaze following it for a second before staring her straight in the eyes and adding— “Erik is not a monster.”

She shivered and had to look away, and he withdrew his hand, turning to leave. 

“Erik—“ she called after him, wrapping her arms around herself. “Erik, do you mean it? I can see him? You won’t be mad?”

“Heartbroken, but not mad.”

“There’s nothing to be heartbroken over,” she rolled her eyes and got up to follow him. “Look—“ she stretched her hand out, showing him the ring. “I’m still wearing your ring. I’m not going to— to _do_ anything with him. I just want to talk to him a little, about the old days. Erik, that won’t change anything between us, I promise.”

He turned to look at her, at how earnestly she believed her own words, but he couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that she was promising her word on something that she didn’t even yet know that she couldn’t keep. 

“I hope you’re right, child.”

The next time the vicomte came to her dressing room door against her wishes, she accepted his invite to dinner. 

The entire carriage ride to the restaurant consisted of him telling her every small detail of his life since they had parted, all sparked by her polite question of _”how have you been?”_. He had lived a lavish life in her absence, it had seemed. He had grown up with all the finery one would expect from one of his station, he had done a stint in the navy, though, of course, nothing too dangerous, and he was currently — though he didn’t say it in so many words — following in his brother’s footsteps. Christine had never been overly fond of the elder de Chagny, but Raul always had been sweeter than Philippe, so she felt she could overlook a few uncomfortable similarities. 

It wasn't until after their food had been ordered — by Raoul, for both of them, without asking her what she would like — that the thought occurred to him to ask what had happened to her in the last six years since he had seen her. 

The question, though expected by both her own wishes and by propriety, caught her with a strange feeling. She fidgeted with the ring on her right hand. 

“Well, after we parted, a lot has happened, I suppose,” she started. “We went on as we had for a little while, then Papa got sick. Then he got sicker. Then he— he passed on.”

She blinked down at the fancy linen tablecloth, willing herself not to cry at the memory. 

“That was when I was sixteen. I went to live with Professor Valerius after that, and he continued my musical training until the next year when he passed on as well. Just a little before that I had been accepted to the Populaire. The Professor’s wife — Mamma Valerius, to me — became ill around that time, and after two seasons at the opera she— well, she went, too.”

She paused. 

“It was very difficult. With Mamma deteriorating so quickly on the heels of losing the Professor, and me having to take care of her while working — it was quite a stressful time. But— I’m here now. I made it. Just like they would have wanted.”

“You really were something up there on stage,” Raoul said admiringly. “Is there someone… funding you?”

She squeezed and twisted at the ring under the table, the cool metal growing warm under her insistent fingers. 

“No. I’ve only recently come into the spotlight, as it were. Hardly anyone cares to notice a chorus girl.”

“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, I’m sure they’ll all notice you now. How could they not?”

“Thank you,” she said demurely as the waiter brought their food to them. 

“You’re very welcome,” Raoul smiled, thinking her comment was directed to him.

“You know,” he said as they started eating. “I can't get over how beautiful you’ve become.”

She blushed but said nothing.

“For a while there, when we were young, I thought you might turn out rather plain!” he laughed, and she glanced up at him with annoyance. “But you really are— you’re really something.”

“I’m glad I didn’t turn out plain,” she said dryly. “How terrible that would have been… For you.”

He laughed as though she were being serious. 

“You should smile more, Lotte,” he said around a rather large bite. “You don’t smile like you used to. You’re prettier when you smile.”

She stared at him blankly. Not five minutes ago she had told him how she’d lost every person she loved, every person who had ever cared about her, all in the span of less than two years. Was it any wonder she didn’t smile anymore? Had he already forgotten? What did she have to smile about?

He looked at her with concern, and she flashed him a smile that didn’t go past her lips, the kind of smile that Erik would stop and inquire about because he could tell something was wrong behind it. But Raoul couldn’t tell — or didn’t care to notice — that it was plastered on an otherwise sad face, and he lit up at that smile. 

Conversation — or rather, Raoul talking while she listened — turned to other subjects of the day, and he wasn’t shy with his opinions. He tried to pry into whether or not certain pieces of theater gossip he’d heard were true or not, and she only replied that she didn’t go in for gossip. She tucked the information away in the back of her brain that he was likely going to ask around for gossip about her, as well. Very well — let him hear that she had a secret husband and was tutored by a ghost! 

“You know, I was so surprised to see you up there in a leading role, Lotte! When I first heard that you’d been accepted to the cast, I never thought you’d end up there.”

She paused in the middle of cutting up a chicken wing. 

“What?”

He blinked. 

“Oh, I’m sorry — I didn’t mean — it’s just, I thought you’d stay in the chorus for a few years, then drop out when you found a man to marry.”

She set her knife down, her mind working overtime. There was enough to pack with the implication that he hadn’t thought her good enough for leading roles, though, she supposed, he wasn’t entirely off base considering her voice before Erik had begun to work with her. 

“You knew I was at the opera?” she asked in a small voice, squeezing her fork tightly. 

“Yes. Why?” he looked puzzled. 

She blinked rapidly. 

“All that time, you knew all that time?”

He nodded, not quite getting why she was asking. 

“You never once said anything. You never came to see me or speak to me.”

“Why would I?” he shrugged. “You were just a chorus girl, you said it yourself. I was busy, too. Besides, I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Did you know Papa had died?” she asked quietly. 

A look of sadness, or perhaps pity, crossed his face. 

“Ah, yes. I think I had heard. Terrible business.”

She set her fork down next to her knife. She was no longer hungry. He had known that she was all alone in the world for four years, known where to find her, where to contact her, and yet chose to not do anything about it, not to say anything? No _I’m sorry about your father, Christine, he was a good man_? No card on Christmas to remind her that she wasn’t alone? Even now he hadn’t once expressed sympathy for her loss. The kind little boy she had known was gone, it seemed — replaced by a man who had grown up surrounded by wealth and privilege to the extent that he might as well have been from another planet. 

“Why did you ask me here tonight?” she asked quietly, staring at her half eaten food. 

“To talk to you,” he said, smiling obliviously. 

“But why?”

Why now? Why not drop her a note all those years ago, congratulating her on getting a job at the opera? Why not come see her when she was in the chorus? 

“Because,” he said as though it were obvious. “Because I wanted to.”

He glanced at some of the other tables, and she followed his gaze. The other diners were glancing their direction with varying levels of admiration and envy. 

Then she understood. 

“Because I’m a star now,” she said, realization settling on her like a heavy cloud. 

He smiled wryly, a handsome, boyish smile. 

“See — you get it!”

“You want to be seen with the rising star of the Populaire,” she said, and took her napkin from her lap and placed it on the table, squeezing it extra hard before releasing it. 

“Well, being seen with a vicomte can only help you, too,” he chuckled. 

“I see.”

He continued to chatter mindlessly as he ate, not noticing that she looked uncomfortable and wasn’t eating her own food. 

By the time he finished and was walking her back to carriage to take her to her apartment, she was beginning to regret even coming to dinner. He didn’t care about her — he was only interested in her now because she was on the verge of becoming famous. 

She was very nearly sulking over it on the ride back. To think, she’d gotten in a tiff with Erik over _this!_

Raoul sat uneasily, not certain why she seemed so cold suddenly. He wracked his brain for something to say, something to make her smile again. 

“I’m glad we did this, Lotte,” he said warmly. 

“Oh?”

From the tone of her voice, he expected snowflakes to materialize around her. 

“I must confess — I would like to do this again with you. Regularly.”

She pressed her lips together. 

“Oh?”

“Christine,” he shifted about, nervous. “I’ve found I quite like you. I’d- I’d like us to be more... intimately acquainted.”

She straightened up, looking out the window. 

“I will be frank with you, Raoul, because we have such a history behind us. I want to focus solely on my career. My tutor thinks that dallying with patrons is a distraction, and for myself, I’m inclined to agree. I’m flattered by your _interest_ , but that’s not the type of relationship I’m looking for.”

He felt shame and anger bristle up in him. She was rejecting him? Brushing him off? 

“A patron?” he scoffed the word, as though it were something dirty and definitely not what he had been proposing mere seconds ago. “Christine — you wound me. My intentions are pure, I assure you!”

“Oh, I’m certain they are,” she humored him. “But I—“

“I had intended to ask for your hand in marriage,” he said, looking hurt. 

Her protests died on her tongue. 

Marriage?

“Had you really?” she breathed.

“Yes. I feel quite strongly for you, Christine,” he said. “Seeing you again after so many years has only reminded me of it. And I was hoping to make this a more permanent arrangement, not some trifling fling.”

Her mind was racing. Marriage. She swallowed hard. 

“I don’t know what to say,” she said truthfully. 

Raoul hesitated, trying to think of something to reply with. He hadn’t truly thought of marriage until that moment, until she had been so close to turning down his proposal to make her his mistress, but now that he’d said it, he found it was not without its charm. His childhood sweetheart who became his bride — that was a lovely idea, was it not? He found himself suddenly attached to it, and he knew he had to convince her. 

“I think— I think your Papa would be happy if that happened,” he tried. 

Christine was struck by the thought — he was probably correct. Her Papa had loved Raoul as a boy, and he had always been happy that the two had played together when they spent their vacations by the sea. He _had_ wanted her to marry. He would approve a marriage to Raoul in a heartbeat. 

She chewed nervously on her lip, crossing her arms around herself. 

“Raoul, this is so sudden!”

“I mean it, Lotte. I’ve fallen for you. I want you to marry me.”

“Can— can I think it over?”

“Of course!”

They arrived outside her apartment, and before she got out of the carriage he took her hands and kissed them, his thumb brushing over her gold ring and making her shiver. 

“I want you to think about it,” he told her earnestly. “I want you to think about and tell me your answer in two weeks, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll come visit you again before then. We’ll have a lot to talk about, I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

She was beginning to feel lightheaded. 

Once out of the carriage she ran up to her apartment and slammed the door, groaning and holding her head. She pushed the matter out her head entirely, trying to some amount of rest that kept eluding her. 

She had a lesson with Erik the next evening. 

“Something is bothering you, child,” he said immediately, tilting his head as he studied her with concern. “What is it?”

She startled, looking up at him with shock. He was so much more perceptive than Raoul. 

“Nothing,” she lied. 

She couldn’t tell Erik about Raoul had said. He would absolutely lose it. Besides, she didn’t even know her answer yet. 

“How was dinner?” he asked solemnly. 

“It was— good,” she said carefully. “We, ah— we’re going to have dinner again the day after tomorrow.”

Erik said nothing. 

The thought of the proposal haunted her at every turn. There was scarcely a moment she wasn’t thinking of it. 

Raoul was boor. A fancy, refined, and polished one, but a boor all the same. Judged on his behavior, he would not be very high on the list of examples of men she’d consider marrying. 

Except—

She knew marriage was often a business deal and nothing more. Papa and Mamma Valerius had wanted her to marry eventually. Even Mamma had married the Professor because he was moderately wealthy and kind to her. Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect a perfect husband who loved her ardently and about whom she felt similarly. 

She knew Meg and the other girls would all jump at the chance to marry a wealthy man, and Raoul was quite wealthy. As a vicomtesse she would live an easy life with very few wants that would go unfulfilled. Property, a title, wealth, security, servants — all of this could be hers. Did she want that? It felt like such a silly question — who wouldn’t want that? Yet still she felt the need to ask it of herself. 

All of the other girls in the chorus and the corps sighed and swooned over seeing her on Raoul’s arm, and she became acutely aware that any of them would kill to be in her place. Her salary at the opera would not be enough to live on forever. Her choices for after her career began to fade were limited. She knew all too well the sting of being poor, and she refused to live that life again. 

Raoul— 

Raoul was not terrible. She still had good memories of their childhood summers spent together. She felt something for him, it was true, but she feared that what she felt was more wistful nostalgia and the hope to bring back a life that had forever slipped from her fingers than it was to build a life in the future with the man he was now. As always, in the course of her searching of her own mind, the thought of Erik appeared and was swiftly, shamefully pushed aside. 

She stared at herself long and hard in the mirror of her apartment before going to her second dinner with Raoul. What did she want out of life? What should she want out of life? She wanted her Papa to be proud of her, she wanted to sing, she wanted— 

She lowered her eyes from her own gaze. 

Some wants were not fit to mention. 

She glanced up at the clock. Raoul would be there soon to pick her up. She needed to be ready. 

At the de Chagny mansion, Raoul stared himself down in the mirror and smoothed back his hair. He had to look impeccable tonight. So much was riding on this. 

Ever since seeing her beautiful form on stage, she had metamorphosed into a glittery trophy to have on his arm, a dazzling award he could possess if he just said the right words. Christine Daaé was a prize, and he intended to win her, no matter what he had to say or do to get her. 

A child of wealth and station, he was used to getting what he wanted, to only having to ask once for his wishes to be fulfilled. Christine presented a challenge to him — one he found he could not lose gracefully. 

All during dinner he flattered her sweetly. He laid the compliments on heavy, hoping to turn her uncertain smiles into something more genuine. How to solve this puzzle? What was the key to unlocking her love? 

And then, as they made their way outside, underneath of the winking stars and sleepy moon, he hit upon it. 

“I had a dream last night, Lotte,” he told her. “I dreamed your father was alive and well, and he joined us for a summer by the sea.”

She looked up at him, her face earnest. 

“We were married,” Raoul continued eagerly, encouraged by her expression. “And he was so happy. It felt like he was giving his blessing to our union.”

She brushed her fingers across the silver locket that her father had given her so very long ago, telling her that it had belonged to her mother. It was the only connection she had to either of them, now — the locket, and Raoul. Why couldn’t Papa appear to her in a dream and just tell her what to do? She was briefly jealous of Raoul. 

“Do you think he ever dreamed of this?” Raoul said wistfully as they got in his carriage and sat down for the journey to her apartment. He brushed his fingers across the top of her hand. “Of you and I — of you being safely married and protected? Of you having a title and prosperity?”

She swallowed hard. Protected. She wanted to be protected. She wanted that desperately. 

“I think he would,” he went on. “I think he wouldn’t want anything more. You know, as long as the two of us remember him, it’s almost like he’s still alive. He’s still alive and here with us. And we’ll tell our children of him.”

“Children?” she asked, her brow crinkling. 

He nodded. 

“I bet we’ll have a boy first, a son. We’ll name him Gustave after your father, don’t you think?”

He reached out and squeezed her hand, and she stared down at it. 

A son. Their son. Gustave. She hadn’t put much thought into having children, but this sounded... nice. 

“He can learn the violin. I still remember your father teaching me the violin. We’ll have a perfect life, I’m certain. A life your father would want for you.”

She looked up at him in the dim light, and the word was out of her mouth before she even realized it. 

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

She half expected thunder to strike her, but nothing happened. Erik was not magic or supernatural, he was merely a man of a sort, and he was probably playing the organ at that very moment, or sulking in a corner as he sometimes did, all completely unaware of his beloved student and how she was pledging her life to another. 

Erik. She suddenly felt uncomfortable, like she needed to take back what she’d just said. She’d already made other plans, she couldn’t marry Raoul—

But Raoul was already putting a diamond ring on her finger, and he was already babbling about their beautiful life together and making promise after promise, words falling from his mouth like jewels — like toads, maybe, either one — like the girl in the story her father used to tell her. 

She blinked at the diamond, surprised at how big it was, and how it fit her hand so well. 

“Raoul,” she said urgently. “Please— can we— can we not tell anyone just yet?”

His face fell, and she almost winced at how sad he looked. 

“Why?” he asked, staring at the ring on her hand. 

“We said two weeks, remember?” she tried. “That I would give you my answer in two weeks. Well, our two weeks isn’t up yet. And I just— I have my reasons, Raoul. I will marry you, I just— I need a bit of time before anyone else knows, okay?”

Raoul rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. 

“Okay,” he said finally. 

He dropped her off in front of her apartment, kissing her before he let her go. She demurely turned her head away, causing him to kiss her cheek instead of her lips. 

She spent the night miserable, tossing and turning. Should she marry Raoul? He had been more polite that evening, and he did seem awfully fond of her. She could do much worse than Raoul de Chagny. 

There was only one thing standing in her way, but she didn’t know how to get around it. She had to be realistic, she knew, and face up to what she could or couldn’t have. And she couldn’t have what she truly wanted — she couldn’t even dare to name what she wanted. Raoul was the safe choice. Raoul was the logical choice. She had to pick Raoul... Didn’t she? 

He was slightly peeved about it, but he kept the engagement a secret even though he didn’t understand why. At the end of the two weeks, her mind had been settled in the matter and she’d grown accustomed to the idea of it. There was only one thing left to do before the news ould go public. 

She had to tell Erik. 

She agonized over telling Erik. How was she supposed to bring it up to him? Why did it feel like such a betrayal? She twisted the gold ring on her finger and stared forlornly at it. She had made him no promise, no spoken one, anyway. She was breaking the condition of celibacy, true, but she hadn’t agreed to marry Erik. His condition had only referred to other kinds of situations, anyway — she hadn’t promised him she’d never marry, only that she wouldn’t allow herself to be distracted with frivolous, go-nowhere relationships. 

They all sounded like such weak arguments, even in her own mind. 

“Erik,” she said softly one day as she was with him in his lair. Tomorrow would be the end of the two weeks, and she had tried so many times to tell him before this but had always lost her nerve. No more. He had to know. “I have something I must tell you.”

He looked at her, unmasked and expression full of openness, full of trust. She almost couldn’t bear it. Her eyes slid away from his face. 

“You know I’ve been out with Raoul a few times,” she started, growing more nervous. 

“Yes,” he said, a hint of disdain passing across his face. 

“He, ah— he asked me to marry him.”

Erik snorted and shook his head. 

“What a pathetic little whelp he is.”

She looked up, hurt. 

“He is not.”

“Oh, he is too, Christine,” Erik said, rolling his eyes. “He has no sense in his head, asking you — you! — to marry him. As if it could ever work out!”

Christine became very still and quiet. 

“Erik, I told him yes,” she finally said quietly. 

“Ha ha! Don’t make me laugh, Christine!”

But he didn’t sound amused. 

“Well, why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you belong to me,” he told her, every trace of humor vanishing. 

She wrinkled her nose. 

“I belong to no one but myself,” she reminded him. 

He nodded towards her ring, crossing his arms. 

“You promised me. You promised.”

She took a deep breath. 

“I know what I promised. But he is a vicomte, and he is proposing marriage. I will have a title, and property, and servants. I will have security, stability.”

His lips twisted into a sneer, but she continued. 

“I don’t know when or if this kind of chance will come again. Who will ever want to marry me when I’m old and my career is over?”

He gave her a look as though she’d just said something so oblivious that it broke his heart. 

“Christine,” he said brokenly. “What do you think that ring on your hand even means?”

She skirted around the subject, too afraid to acknowledge it. 

“This is a good opportunity. It’s what my Papa would have wanted for me,” she forged ahead. “I’m going to be married, Erik. And I’m afraid that— that to do so, we’ll have to be parted.”

“What?”

“I can’t keep spending time here at the opera house like this, with you, as a vicomtesse...”

“Then you cannot be a vicomtesse,” he told her, shrugging. 

She shot him an annoyed glance. 

“No. It means I have to pick between the two.”

“So tell him you picking singing. You pick me.”

He was getting antsy now. She picked nervously at her fingernails. 

“Tell him you don’t want to marry him,” he insisted, his voice slightly higher than normal. 

“But I do want to marry him—“

“You want to leave your Erik,” he accused her. “After everything he’s done for you, you would truly seek to part from him?”

His words hung in the air around them. He had created her career that had led to Raoul finding her, and she felt guilty about it, but she knew she owed him nothing. She was about to open her mouth to tell him so when she was struck with an uncomfortable thought — Erik might die without her. Had he not said as much on several occasions before, words of devotion pledged to her in innocuous moments and said with glowing eyes in a way that stirred and terrified her all at once? 

She didn’t want her leaving to be the thing that harmed him. But she refused, also, to sacrifice herself for him. He had lived an entire life — entire _lives_ — without her, surely he could find a way to go on in her absence. 

She swallowed hard and lowered her eyes, trying to firm her resolve. 

“I would have had to part from you eventually, Erik,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I am only a mortal girl, with a mortal lifespan. Another five decades, maybe a little more—“

“No!” he shouted, panic lighting up his eyes. “No! I would not allow it!”

She glance ruefully at him. 

“It’s not about whether you’ll allow it, Erik, it just _happens_ —“

“No, no — I would not let death take you, Christine. Nothing could take you from me. I would change you, I would make you like _me_ — we could be happy together for ages, long after everything and everyone we know is gone — Christine, I mean it — you and I — the very same—“

She felt very cold suddenly. 

“I didn’t— I didn’t know you could do that,” she whispered, and began picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. 

“There are ways,” he insisted. “My kind can do that. We almost never do — we are solitary creatures, normally — but sometimes — sometimes we do. When—“

He turned away, his face burning, tried to gather his nerve before continuing. 

“When one like me cannot find a mate of our own kind — if we have sought solitude too far from the others like us — we have the ability to change someone of a different kind to be similar to us.”

“And you were planning—“

“I would have asked,” he insisted, looking at her with pleading eyes. “I would have asked first. I’m not a monster, please believe me.”

“But you expected me to agree to that? Without discussing it first?”

“We— we would discuss it,” he sputtered. “We _are_ discussing it right now!”

“This isn’t a discussion,” she said, trying to keep her voice from rising. “This is you telling me what you’d already planned to do.”

She’d noticed his odd habit of using certain words in certain ways that didn’t quite fit, and sometimes she wondered if he simply didn’t know the difference — did his kind have their own language? Did they speak together in something other than French? — or if he knew and purposely twisted those words to mean what he wanted them to mean. 

At that moment, as he stood there with his myriad plans he had for her future that he expected her to go along with without even considering if it was what she wanted, he reminded her very much of her father. 

She scrubbed her fists at her red eyes. 

“What if I don’t want that?” she asked through her tears. “What if I don’t want the life you have planned for me?”

“Why wouldn’t you want that?” he asked, baffled, and ran a hand through his hair. 

“Because! Because I’m a human! Because that’s unnatural to me! You— you want me to be like you? To do what you do? Live like you?”

Her panicked words struck him like so many knives. Was she disgusted by what he was? Did she think him unnatural? He was only as he had been since birth! He was no specter! He was a flesh and blood creature like herself, living the life nature had set before him! Hot tears began to well in his eyes as he felt his control over the situation — over himself — beginning to slip. 

“Christine—“ he begged. 

“It’s my life, Erik,” she sobbed into her hands. “Only I should get to decide what to do with it.”

“You act as though I am your jailor!” 

“Well if you wont grant me freedom when I ask for it, what is the difference?” she shouted right back at him. 

He held a finger up as though he were about to lecture her, his jaw opening and closing but no words were coming out. 

“I’m going to leave, and I’m going to marry Raoul,” she insisted. 

“I should have drained him when I had the chance!” he seethed. “I should have never let him stick his pretty little nose into my business and then he wouldn’t be stealing you away like this!”

“It’s my choice, Erik—“

“ _I_ have the final say, Christine, you are _my_ student—“

“You don’t control me, Erik,” she told him. “You can’t.”

“You ignorant child!” he shouted. “Do you really think I’ll let you go? Just like that?”

“I’m going, Erik,” she insisted. “That’s final.”

“You’ll never leave me, never!” 

The words echoed off the stone and she flinched. He stalked closer to her, menacing, but she jutted her chin out and stamped her foot. 

“I am the mistress of my own actions, only I decide what I— _ow_!”

In his rage he had unthinkingly reached out and grabbed her arm, intending to do what past pull her close to him he wasn’t certain, but neither one got a chance to find out. 

“Erik you’re hurting me!”

Tears sprung to her eyes as she tried to pull away from him. He immediately let go of her and reeled backwards, shock and horror at his own actions written plainly across his face. 

She rubbed her hand over the area where he knew a bruise was already forming. Silent tears fell down her face as she stared at him, heartbroken. 

He couldn’t bear how she was looking at him. He looked down at his own traitorous hand, flexing it and squeezing it into a fist. He swallowed hard, his mouth and throat dry. 

What had he done? 

Vaguely, the words she was tearfully speaking floated through the haze to him. 

“If you truly loved me, you would want me to be happy, even if it’s not with you.”

_If_ he loved her? Truly loved her? But he did! He did! He could leave no doubt in her mind, he mustn’t let her think he didn’t really love her— 

“I’ll take you up above,” he said, his voice hollow. “I’ll take you up, and you’ll go to your boy.”

She sniffed and looked down, still crying quietly. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. 

To him, their fight was only proof that he would hurt her — _had_ already hurt her, and would do so again in the future, possibly worse. He had forgotten himself in a spiral of rage, and though he had never meant to harm her, he had. That, along with her words, was only proof that he had to let her go. Perhaps he really wasn’t what was best for her, after all. 

He escorted her above, both of them silent on the journey. When at last he stood just put the reach of the sunlight at the Rue Scribe entrance, they both hesitated. 

“I’m sorry that it had to be like this,” she said, standing in the sunlight and peering into the darkness. 

He shook his head in the shadows. 

“I am the sorry one. Forgive me.”

“I still have to go. Even if you’re sorry.”

“I know.”

“Erik... I know you say you love me, but—“

“But?” he echoed hollowly. 

“But when I’m with Raoul, please — please don’t come after me. Please don’t come look in on me. Please don’t— don’t hurt Raoul,” she said, her voice getting quieter with each request. “Please just let me go and let that be the end of it.”

Erik said nothing. 

As she turned and walked away, she was filled with the awful feeling that she might never see him again. She hesitated and turned to glance behind, but he was gone. Somehow this made her only sadder. 

She looked to road ahead of her and almost faltered. She was leaving her beloved teacher behind in the most heartrending way possible. Why couldn’t he have just understood? Why had he had to yell at her like that, scare her? 

She felt a pang of guilt at the thought. He hadn’t meant to grab her, but that didn’t change the fact that he had. Still, she could remember the look of horror on his face as he’d realized what he’d done. She sighed. She hadn’t wanted their goodbyes to go like that. She supposed, though, that there really wasn’t any way it could have actually gone well. He was terribly attached to her. 

She looked down at her hands. She took a few steps back to the hidden entrance, and, stooping down, she hid the golden ring in between two loose bricks, out of the way of prying eyes and somewhere where he would find it again. One last tear slid down her face. 

It would never do to go to her fiancé wearing another man’s ring, and it was only right that Erik should have it back. He would recover, she hoped. She couldn’t stick around to find out, however. Raoul was expecting her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is only one chapter left after this chapter :’) this really has turned out to be such a long “oneshot”! Thank you so much to everyone for the comments! ❤️

The loss of Erik was like an ache deep in her bones. She had never realized just how much she loved his company until he was gone. She often she would awake in the middle of the night, expecting to see a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness, only to find herself completely alone. Even in the opera house — his very abode — she was strikingly alone. It surprised her, in a way. It seemed he really had respected her wishes when she’d asked him to let her go and not contact her again. How many times did she stand in front of her mirror in her dressing room and trace her own wistful reflection, wishing someone was behind it? But there was never anyone behind it, not even when she’d hesitantly call out his name, beckoning him. She longed for him to be there as much as she feared he would be, and she didn’t know which outcome would be worse. 

She was an engaged woman now. She couldn’t remain hung up on the way things might have been. She could not become a vampire. 

She tried her best to fall into the role that had been set before her, and sometimes she could almost pretend it was going well. Life with Raoul in it was very different than life before him. She had thought that Erik could be demanding at times, but Raoul seemed to want control over every aspect of her. 

After their engagement was official, he had insisted that she move into the de Chagny mansion. It seemed a sweet offer, at first — he wanted her near him, he wanted her to save her salary, he couldn’t wait to begin their life together. A snide comment she overheard him make to his brother, however, seemed to indicate that his major motivation in her moving in was so that he could keep tabs on where she was — and who she was letting in her bed. Her face burned with fury and shame, but perhaps this was just how men talked to each other. She didn’t know, and she was not about to throw away a life of riches over her hurt pride. 

Besides, he was kind to her, wasn’t he? He took her to places she’d never have gotten into on her own. 

There was a ball coming up, and not a single guest had been invited who didn’t have a title. She was excited for it. She hadn’t felt excited about much in a long time. She went to her closet and began to pick her outfit for the evening, laying out a beautiful blue dress and a pair of delicate leather boots that had been dyed a matching blue. As she moved on to picking out which earrings would look best with her chosen gown, Raoul entered her room without knocking. 

“Oh, you weren’t wearing that, were you?” he asked, glancing at what she had laid out on the bed before going to her closet. 

“I was going—“

“I want you to wear this one,” he told her, pulling out a dress she had never cared much for. 

“But I thought—“

“And please don’t wear heels, Lotte,” he said, staring at the boots by the edge of her bed with a hurt expression. 

“Why-ever not?” she asked, surprised. 

He gave her a pitiful look, like he was ashamed. 

“If you wear those, you’ll be taller than me!”

She blinked at him. What did that matter? She couldn’t help that. They were practically the same height anyway. Raoul was not particularly short, but she was rather tall for a woman, she supposed. But this was the first he had made it out to be a problem. 

“Wear your flat shoes, okay? And please tell me you aren’t wearing that old locket tonight.”

Her hand flew up possessively to the silver locket around her neck. 

“This was my mother’s locket.”

“It looks cheap. Here, wear this instead,” he pulled a diamond necklace out of her jewelry box and set it before her. 

He strode out of the room as confidently as he’d entered it, not bothering to close the door behind him. 

Christine sat at her vanity and stared down at the necklace he’d picked, too ashamed to look herself in the eye, and squeezed her hand around her mother’s locket. She was no longer looking forward to the party. 

But she was an actress, a true Parisian, and she could wear a mask of gaiety over her sadness as easily as putting on a pair of gloves, and she smiled the whole ball through, for Raoul’s sake. Her façade slipped only once, at a casual joke made by his acquaintance about where the seemingly happy couple had met. 

“You really go over the top, Dr Chagny!” the man laughed. “It wasn’t enough to hear her and have her, you had to put a ring on her, too! Cheers, cheers!”

He was obviously drunk, and Christine tried to remind herself of this fact. Raoul laughed, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She had the distinct impression that she would never be viewed as more than a mistress, and she began to wonder if perhaps she would have been better off being that instead. A lifetime of this before her eyes — people who would never accept her as what she was, and a husband who didn’t seem to care if they did or not. 

But it was not all terrible. Sometimes he’d smile at her over breakfast, and he seemed genuine then. His brother had a huge library of books that she was free to peruse, though she’d yet to find one that Raoul had actually read so that they could talk about it together. Her bed was warm and soft and the blankets luxurious, the food at meals was exquisite and unlike anything she’d had before — her child self would have wept with joy to know such royal treatment was now hers. The de Chagny gardens were beautiful, and she loved to stroll through them at every given chance. There were no gardens in Erik’s lair. 

Erik. 

She had been back to opera house numerous times to finish out the season, and she hadn’t heard from him or seen any sign that he was even still there. It made her feel lonely. But she had only herself to blame, she supposed — she had asked him to leave her be, and he had. The memory of him, however, haunted her like a ghost. 

It had been only a week after she’d moved in that Raoul tugged her aside to his study, closing and locking the door. He looked at her with a thinly veiled hunger, and she realized what he wanted. She fidgeted with her hands. It surely couldn’t be all bad, she supposed. She was going to be his wife, so she might as well. 

He took her in his arms and kissed her cheek, placing kiss after kiss to her face before moving to her lips. As soon as his mouth touched hers, she was consumed with the image of kissing Erik instead. She pushed him back, shocked. Why was she thinking that? 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, confused. 

She was just as confused. 

“I can’t,” she choked out. 

“What?”

“Oh, Raoul, I’m sorry! I— I want to wait!” she said, her voice rising in pitch as she started to panic. Why was she picturing Erik?!

Raoul ran a hand through his hair. 

“Wait till we’re married?”

She nodded vigorously. 

“Oh— well, that’s okay, I guess,” he frowned. 

She gathered her courage to dart past him and unlock the door, running out into hallway. Her heart was pounding. Erik! 

She couldn’t get over what had happened. Was it Erik’s doing? Was he inside her mind, as he sometimes was? She pressed her hand to her forehead. But it couldn’t be Erik. He had to be near her for her to hear him in her mind, and she could always sense when he was near. He was very far away, currently, so far she didn’t even know where he could be. 

But that left only one possibility. If Erik hadn’t put that thought in her head, then that meant that she—

She approached Raoul shamefully two days later. She took his hand and led him to the library, intent on carrying out an important — yet possibly cruel — experiment. Once there she stopped and turned to him, licking her dry lips. 

“Raoul,” she whispered, desperate. “Kiss me?”

His brow furrowed. 

“I thought you want to wait—“

“I do, but— but I want to just kiss. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

He leaned forward and captured her lips. She pressed into the kiss, her brow crinkling. He broke away briefly to breath and then kissed her again from a different angle. His first kiss had done nothing, but this one— 

A tear slid down her cheek. This was felt different, and she knew why. He kissed her again and she kissed back, almost eager as the tears continued to drip down her cheeks. 

“Oh, Erik—“ she breathed between kisses. 

Raoul pulled back. 

“What? What did you say?”

Her eyes slid closed but even that didn’t stem the tears. 

“It’s a Swedish word,” she lied quietly, squeezing her hands in the fabric of his sleeves. “It means I love you.”

Her fiancé’s kisses were only pleasurable when she imagined that it was Erik’s lips pressed against her own. 

Raoul leaned in to kiss her again, pushing aside any concern over a half-heard murmur, because he didn’t understand Swedish. 

Christine’s mind was lost to her imagination, trying to picture how Erik’s gnarled lips might feel against her own, trying to decide what it might feel like with his fangs, trying to picture the savage intensity that would surely accompany any kiss of his. 

She thought about the strange situation often. It was her own treacherous mind that sought to bring these ideas up, but as to why she wasn’t certain. All she knew was that each time she and Raoul kissed, she pictured her monstrous teacher instead. 

She had silently resigned herself to a life of secret longing for something she could never have, content to live this life ahead of her and enjoy her luxury and tolerate her husband when something came to the surface that caused her to seriously reconsider. 

She was humming to herself as she sat down to breakfast. 

“Good morning, Lotte,” he greeted her at the table. 

“Good morning, Raoul. You know, I was just wondering what the opera house might pick for the coming season. There’s been talk that my next role will be the lead, whatever it is.”

Raoul set his fork down on his plate with a clatter. 

“Next role?” he asked, disbelieving. 

“Well, of course — why not?”

“Christine, you are a wife now. You need not perform up there like some— some girl who has to work for her keep.”

She blinked. 

“But I like performing. I like being up there. I like singing! Why should I stop?”

“Because I told you to.”

She started to laugh at this absurdity but then realized he was serious. 

“You don’t want me to sing?” she asked in a small voice.

“No. You’ve retired from the stage, as of now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“And Christine—“ he hesitated but pushed ahead. “Can you not sing here, either? I hear you in the garden sometimes, or in your room.”

“I can’t sing on stage but I also can’t sing in my own home?” she asked with a flush. 

“I’m just afraid it’ll give the servants the wrong idea.”

“The idea that I, a singer, like singing?”

“That you miss your old life.”

She didn’t finish her breakfast. She’d lost her appetite, somehow. 

She stayed in the de Chagny mansion for six long months. Raoul kept asking about wedding dates, and she kept putting them off, a strange panic rising up in her when questioned about it. Marriage seemed to loom before her like an empty grave, waiting to signal the end of the life she’d known. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, only that she couldn’t bear to face a wedding right now. 

He took her to a dressmaker to have a wedding gown fashioned. Her head was spinning to see so many patterns and styles and asked about fabrics and lace and ribbons. Seeing that she was overwhelmed, the dressmaker narrowed it down to two choices. 

“This gown is in the very cutting edge of fashion,” the woman told her. “It would take four months for the lace to be shipped here from the East, I’m afraid. This one over here, though, could be tailored to you and ready to go down the aisle next week!”

“Next week!” Raoul echoed, his face lighting up. 

Fear gripped her in a cold iron fist. She clung to the fabric of the fashionable gown. 

“This one, Raoul, please — I love it so much. I want this one,” she looked at him, her eyes wide and terrified and pleading, begging a stay of execution, desperate to put off the wedding as long as she could by any means that she could. 

He looked doubtful. 

“You want to wait that long?”

“The dress is so lovely,” she said and bit her lip. 

He agreed to it. 

They waited on the dress to be finished and life went on as it had. She pined and had doubts and dreamed of running out to the woods and never coming back to this huge beautiful house that felt more like a cage each day. 

She hadn’t sung in months, not even hummed a tune to herself. It had been so hard at first, to abide by his wishes in this. Music was a part of her, it flowed in her veins — but after a while she lost the ability to care. 

It was one morning when she sat in front of her elaborate vanity mirror that her heart skipped a beat at the sight of herself. Was this her? These dark circles under her eyes? This dull hair? That look of hopelessness in her gaze? She might as well have become a vampire, if this was how she was going to look! 

She studied herself in the mirror, frowning, retracing the steps that had brought her here. On that early morning, all alone, in the solitude of her giant room, she could admit the truth of the matter — she wasn’t happy, and she hadn’t been for a long while now. 

She missed singing, how she’d feel light and airy like a little bird, the feeling of hearing her own voice and all the wonders it could produce. She missed being on the stage, she missed learning new scripts and getting new costumes, missed the sound and the feeling of applause. She missed Erik, and that way he’d look at her as though she were the odd and fascinating creature and not him, how he’d listen to hear speak as though she were something novel and adorable. She even missed his pungent scent and how it would invade and overwhelm her senses. 

Was this really the life her Papa would have wanted for her? Stifled and tired and sad? Even all her comforts, while appreciated and welcome, did little to ease her longing for Erik and singing. Was that to be the rest of her life, then? Days spent longing for something different, wistfully wishing for a change of scenery, nights spent pining over a different man that she imagined in place of her husband? Having a child she’d pawn off on a maid to look after because she didn’t really want it? Watching Raoul leave for his mistress and wishing she could go see her old teacher in a similar fashion? 

Wouldn’t the people in her life who had loved her — Papa, Professor and Mamma Valerius, her mother — wouldn’t they have wanted her to be happy in life? And if her happiness wasn’t the single greatest wish they had for her — why should she even care what they’d wanted for her instead? 

She pulled on her dressing gown, her mind made up. She sought out Raoul, who had just woken up in his own room. 

“Things have changed, Raoul,” she told him solemnly. 

He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, not certain what she meant. 

“Huh?”

“I want to break off the engagement. Please.”

He considered this. 

“You just have cold feet, Lotte. You’ll get over it.”

“That’s not what this is,” she said, despairing. “Please, I don’t want to get married.”

“You’ll change your mind,” he insisted. “Trust me.”

“I know my own mind, Raoul. Look, if I still feel the same this whole week, will you believe me?”

“Sure.”

She left his doorway, heading to her own room. One week. She had only to last one week, and she’d be free. 

The week came and went. She felt the same. She told him so. 

“I’m not cut out to be your wife, Raoul,” she told him gently. “It won’t work in the long run. I’m very, very sorry, but I think it’s for the best. We should split up now before it goes farther and we have to go through the scandal of divorce.”

He wouldn’t hear of it. As far as he was concerned, the wedding was still on. She told him every morning and every night of the following five days that she still felt the same, that she couldn’t love him the way he wanted, that she’d never make a good wife or mother, that she was aching to go back and sing, that she couldn’t imagine a future here like this, but he shrugged her off each time, and where at first there was uncomfortable sympathy in his eyes, soon there was cold indifference. 

On the sixth day, she cried. 

“You don’t love me,” she sobbed into her hands. “You don’t.”

“Of course I do!”

“Raoul look at me,” she begged. “I’m not happy here and you can see that. Why won’t you let me go?”

“You’ll feel different after the wedding.”

“There’s not going to be any wedding! Have you not been listening to me? Raoul, let me go or I will leave you.”

“Go where?”

“Away! Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”

“You’re being silly over the whole thing.”

“I know it bruises your ego, but I mean it. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Look, go get some sleep. You aren’t thinking straight right now.”

She went to her bed. In the morning she told him again, calmly and cooly. She explained her reasons one more time, and she handed his ring back to him and apologized. He stared at her, baffled, as she took her small suitcase of items she had brought to the mansion and walked out the door. 

She found her back to her old apartment, and back to the opera house. The latter felt more like coming home than the former. She was so happy she felt she could weep. She made an appointment to speak to a manager, and she was offered her job back. She was excited for the upcoming season, and they were glad to have her back. 

There was only one thing missing, but she’d only been back a day. She told herself to be patient as she lay in her tiny cot in her rented room. 

On her second day of freedom, she hoped to find Erik. Instead she found Raoul. 

“You’re being ridiculous,” he told her after he’d stopped her in the hallway of the opera house. “you need to come back with me, Christine.”

“I already explained, Raoul.”

Raoul tried to look calm, but inside he was fuming. How dare she refuse him! How dare she make him look like a fool in front of everyone! There was sure to be a great laugh at his expense when the story got out that he’d been rejected by an opera singer. He simply had to make her see reason. 

But she refused. She dismissed him by saying she needed to see the costumer to get ready for the upcoming season. He was furious! But he left. He had no other choice. 

She hoped that that might be then of it. Her meeting with the costumer went well, and Raoul was blessedly absent when it was done. 

The new season was swiftly approaching, and rehearsals would be starting in a matter of days. It made her antsy that she hadn’t seen Erik yet. She’d been back for a handful of days already, yet still no sign of him. 

Being here in his abode made her feel his absence all the more keenly. She had so many things she wanted to tell him, things she wanted to talk to him about. At night she dreamt of him, and she knew what she had to do. 

The day before rehearsals began, she went to the secret Rue Scribe entrance to try to find him. A glint of gold caught her eye as she began her journey to his lair, and she stooped down to pick up the ring he’d given her so long ago. She squeezed it in her fist and kept walking. 

She knew the way, but she realized far too late that she should have brought a lantern with her. She was two stories under the earth when the sparse lighting ran out. She steeled herself to go the rest of the way by feel and memory alone when suddenly she heard a scuffling in the corner. 

“Christine?” asked a shocked voice. 

“Erik?” she spun around to look for him, eyes wide and unseeing. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come back to sing at the opera,” she told him, hands fidgeting around the secret in her palm. 

“Oh,” he breathed. 

“If I told you I didn’t want to do lessons anymore, what would you do?” her voice sounded weak and anxious and she hated it, but she had to know. 

She lifted her gaze to the two points of yellow light in the corner that had crept slightly closer to her. 

“I wouldn’t do anything.”

“I see. Did you come watch me at all, these past six months?”

“No,” he said, sounding pained. “You told me not to.”

“Mm. Erik,” she hesitated. “Would you truly turn me? Make me like you?”

He was quiet a long moment. 

“Only if you asked me to.”

“Do you want to?”

“That is,” he took a long shuddering breath, “that is your decision, Christine, and I leave it up to you. I dearly wish you’d join me in such long life, but— that is up to you, my dear.”

Her heart melted to hear the term from his lips, and she let her eyes slid closed for one happy moment. How she loved being his dear. 

“What would you do if I said I didn’t want to be turned?”

The yellow lights of his eyes went out and came back a few times, evidence of his blinking hard. 

“I— I would miss you,” he said quietly, his voice thick with unshed tears. “I would miss you very much, for a very long time, afterwards.”

She nodded vigorously, knowing he could see her in this darkness in a way she couldn’t see him. 

She stood in front of him, her vision beginning to fill with tears, her mouth full of the words she wanted to say but couldn’t find a way to. 

“Erik—“ she swallowed hard and licked her lips, and her hands fumbled to bring forth the ring — her ring, _his_ ring. 

She held it up to him so that he could see what it was, recognize it, and then she placed on the third finger of her left hand as he stared on in disbelief. 

“I love you,” she told him earnestly, and it was enough. 

He closed the slight distance between them, cupping his hands on each side of her face and stooping low to press a lingering kiss to her forehead. Tears of relief began to roll down her cheeks. 

“I love you, Christine,” he murmured against her hair. “My little living wife.”

She threw her arms around him, resting her teary face on his jacket, and he held her close. There, in the arms of the most dangerous and powerful creature she had ever encountered, she felt safe and protected. It was all she had ever wanted. 

She did what she had always secretly longed to do — she leaned up and touched her hand lightly to the side of his face, and pressed her lips to his. In the midst of that kiss, she could feel and taste the tears that were falling from his eyes too. She was slightly surprised to find — yet it was also what she had often suspected — just how gentle a kiss with fangs could be. 

“Are you mine?” he whispered between kisses. “Are you truly mine?”

“Yours,” she replied softly. “Only ever yours.”

Upon hearing that he scooped her possessively into his arms, draping his cape around her and carrying her like a bride back to his lair. She closed her eyes and nestled her face against his shoulder. She had never known such a sense of relief at admitting something she knew to be true yet had been trying to deny. 

Her Papa might not approve, Mamma Valerius would be horrified, the Professor would tut and shake his head, even Meg would cringe at it all — but none of them had to live with the choices she made. It was her life, and her choice, and she wanted Erik — she would always want Erik, she was certain of it. Even when it didn’t make sense. She loved him, and he loved her, too. The only approval she needed was her own. 

He took her to his lair — their lair, her home now — and he made love to her, awkwardly unsure yet sweetly savage even as he tried his best to be gentle with her. 

In her previous visits, she would sleep on the big soft chair by the fire, but tonight she was cuddled close to him in his coffin where he slept, their legs entwined, his arms around her protectively. 

“I love you,” she whispered to him for what like the thousandth time, letting her hand trace the side of his face and come to rest on the bare skin of his thin chest that showed through his hastily unbuttoned shirt. She smiled a little. It seemed neither of them had fully undressed, having been far too swept away in the moment. 

She could see the tears forming in his eyes at those words as they had every time she’d said them, those tears of relief and unbelief and sheer ecstasy. He leaned in to kiss her forehead and then her cheeks and then her neck and her chest, and she squirmed delightedly under his caresses. One leather gloved hand tangled in her hair and the other gripped the thin fabric of her chemise at her back as she arched against him. 

She knew she had made the right choice. She couldn’t imagine it any other way. 

“I love you, I love you,” he breathed against her collarbone, his tears warm as they fell on her skin. “I will do anything you wish, I promise — I will do whatever it takes to make you happy.”

She closed her eyes and smiled widely, cradling her husband’s head in her arms. She ran her fingers through his sparse hair and kissed the top of his head, which renewed his tears as he clung to her. 

“Take your gloves off,” she murmured. “I want to feel you.”

“I— I might hurt you—“

“You won’t,” she insisted, taking one of his hands and peeling the glove off herself, kissing his boney knuckles. 

He gently placed his bare hand on her cheek, mindful of his long, sharp nails. She shivered a little under his cold touch, but her smile told him that she didn’t mind. 

He took her twice more that night — their wedding night — and he sobbed into her hair afterwards, completely awestruck that she had agreed to be his. Eventually they fell asleep, the beautiful prima donna in the arms of her monstrous husband, and she would not have had it any other way. This feeling was what had been missing with Raoul. Love, true love. This was not where she’d expected to find it, but it was there all the same. 

He awoke first the next morning, finding the soft, delicate form of his wife laying across his chest, and he almost started weeping again. She was simply too much — too good, too pure — and his heart felt like it might burst from love. He would do anything she wished, allow her whatever liberty she desired. He would walk into the agonizing sunlight if she asked him to. He threaded a curl around a finger, silently vowing to try to live up to role she had bestowed upon him. He didn’t know how mortal husbands acted, not fully, but he would always strive to do right by her. 

She woke to the feeling of his cold fingers playing with her hair, and she smiled up at him, still half asleep. She was surprised not by her surroundings as she awoke, but at how comfortable it felt to be in them. She nuzzled her face against his chest and felt his breathing hitch. 

“What of your husband?” he asked her in a soft and trembling voice. 

“What of him? Here’s right here,” she murmured. 

He exhaled and squeezed his arms around her a little tighter. 

“What of your fiancé, then?”

“I don’t want to be a vicomtesse,” she mused as she kissed his throat, then moved up slightly to nip at his neck, causing a great shiver to travel through him. “I’d much rather be your queen.”

When she at last had to return above, everyone remarked at how happy she looked, how positively radiant she was. 

“Christine!” Meg cried, hugging her. “I missed you! Oh, you look like you’re glowing! See, being back here is good for you! I’m so glad.”

“I’m glad too, Meg,” Christine said, blushing. 

She couldn’t put into words how much she’d missed singing, and all the good memories that came with being on the stage. She felt like she was in her own private world where nothing could touch her — until she got word that the vicomte de Chagny was looking for her. 

“Raoul!” she hissed when he found her after rehearsal. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to take you home, Lotte,” he said, offended. 

She raised an eyebrow. 

“This is my home. I’m home.”

“Christine, really—“

“Please don’t make this into a big scene, Raoul,” she asked softly. “I already had this conversation with you, several times now.”

His lip wobbled a little, as though he might start crying. 

“But I love you,” he said, and he sounded like he believed it. 

She sighed deeply and studied him for a moment. 

“Raoul, if you loved me, you wouldn’t keep coming here trying to get me to change my mind and embarrass me in front of everyone. If you loved me, you’d respect my decision and not... do this,” she gestured to him. 

He frowned hard and left. She was sorry for him, but she couldn’t do what he wanted her to do. 

She really had thought that would be the last she’d see of him. Except it wasn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

He came back almost every night, looking for her. Sometimes she’d meet him and try to explain what she’d already told him over and over — she didn’t love him the way he wanted, she could never be his wife, please stop embarrassing them both with these awkward displays — but her words seemed to have no effect on him, so sometimes she instead took to hiding. She hated having to peek around corners to be certain he wasn’t waiting to ambush her with his unwanted love, hated having to run off right after her scenes were done so she could escape his notice. She frequently complained about him to Erik, who listened, interested, and took her words as a warning to himself about what she found to be off-putting in a partner. 

Life with a vampire was not so very different now that they were married. He had been alive for so very long, and with such little contact with humans and their ideas and customs, but he was trying his best. He tried, with varying levels of success, to cook for her until one day she asked him to stop because she couldn’t stand how much smoke was filling the lair from his failures. They still did her lessons together, though it was mostly now just practice while he played accompaniment for her. 

He was beyond anxious to please her, hoping to never drive her off as he had on that day she’d asked to marry Raoul. His first instinct, when he felt he might lose her, was to try to control her — but he knew from the past and what she told him about Raoul was that this was the surest way to alienate her. It was difficult for him at times, but Christine was understanding even while she was firm about her boundaries. He tried his very best to be the decent man she believed he could be, and in return she graced him with her presence. His happiest times were when she was with him. She was like a little golden butterfly, delicate and precious and fragile but so very full of love and passion. He didn’t always understand her or her requests, but he did always love her and listened to her. 

Sometimes he frustrated her, but she loved him dearly. He hadn’t brought up turning her again, not since her question to him on the day of their reunion, but it was something she thought about sometimes. She knew it would be up to her to bring it up again, that if she ever did turn, it would be because she’d asked him to do so. An eternity of this before her — cuddled up in Erik’s embrace as he read a book to her in front of the fire? Sometimes that didn’t sound so scary, after all. 

If anything scared her, it was a simple mortal man — Raoul. Why must he keep pestering her? Why wouldn’t he listen to her? What did he think he was going to gain from all this? 

She tried to spend as much time with Erik as she could, knowing that at least then she was safe from the vicomte. Still, she wished she could have a moment of peace while upstairs. 

She confronted him over it one night, the last night of rehearsals, after finding him waiting outside her dressing room door. 

“You need to leave, vicomte. I do not want to see you here again, do you understand?”

“You aren’t the boss of me,” he narrowed his eyes at her. 

Her heart skipped a beat. He had never looked at her like that before, like he was so angry with her that he might slap her. It was something she had noticed lately, when she saw him — his desperation was turning to anger, and she knew he had heard every whispered story of gossip that she had heard, and that in his mind he was blaming her for the things they were saying, despite him being the one who insisted on showing up here. 

“Really, Raoul,” she lowered her voice, conscious of the others who might overhear. “It’s like no one has ever told you _no_ before.”

“No one’s been stupid enough to,” he said quietly. 

Her eyes widened, and she turned and left quickly, suddenly not wanting to be in even a semi-private place with him. She sought out Meg and the ballet rats, all in one big dressing room not too far away, and she stayed and talked and laughed with them until the shake in her hands and voice had faded and Raoul had left. 

The next night was opening night, and she’d asked that no one tell her if the vicomte was in the audience, but from the way chorus girls and ballerinas would give her pitying, sidelong glances, she knew that he was. She tried to focus on her performance, and the whispers of encouragement from her husband that floated into her mind. She glanced around her, knowing he was near but not entirely certain where. 

She rose to the occasion, and the audience loved her. The show went perfectly and when she went to take her bow, she avoided looking too closely at who might be out there in the sea of faces. After it was over, she hurried off to her dressing room and locked the door behind her. 

She sat down at her vanity with a sigh. She was rather tired from the show, but she was smiling. She couldn’t imagine having gone the rest of her life without this. 

“You were so wonderful tonight, Christine,” Erik said softly, appearing behind her. 

She looked up and beamed at him. 

“Thank you, Erik,” she said sincerely, turning to face him. 

He reached both hands out to lightly touch her face. 

“I want you to go home right now, my dear,” he gently but firmly instructed her. “I will meet you there in a moment, I promise. But you go first. You know the way, do you not?”

“Of course,” she replied, standing and letting herself be guided to the tunnel behind her mirror. 

She gave him one last glance, eyebrow raised at why he wasn’t coming with her, and he took her hand and kissed the back of it. 

“Soon, sweet,” he promised her. “Soon.” 

She went down to the lair as he had instructed, and he replaced the mirror so that her room looked as it normally did. 

Outside, in the hallways, the vicomte had arrived, undaunted by Christine’s previous protests. She had left instructions in no unclear terms that she had not wanted to see the man again, and her dresser stepped in front of him as he tried to approach her closed door. 

“Mlle Daaé is not accepting visitors,” the dresser said nervously but firmly. “And she specifically requested by name that you not be let in.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Raoul dismissed. 

“Please, Monsieur, I’m very sorry—“

Raoul pushed ahead anyway. 

“Christine!” 

He knocked insistently on her door despite the protests from her dresser. 

“Christine! Chri— go away!” he hissed at the woman who was still protesting his presence. “Christine!”

The dresser bustled off, hoping to find a stagehand who might agree to persuade the vicomte into leaving. 

He rattled her doorknob and realized it was unlocked, so he pushed the door open and entered her private sanctuary. 

“Christine?” he called as he closed the door behind him. “Where the devil are you?”

He stood and looked around the room, confused. She was nowhere to be found, but he had the distinct impression he wasn’t alone. 

It was just as he turned, about to leave and go look for her elsewhere, that a huge black shadow dropped from where it was clinging to the ceiling and fell to the ground almost on top of him. He had a brief moment to think that he could have sworn he saw a pair of glinting, glowing yellow eyes in that cloud of darkness, and then, suddenly—

When the dresser arrived with a burly stagehand, Mlle Daaé’s dressing room was empty. 

Erik arrived in his lair almost an hour later, swaying slightly as though he was drunk. Christine had been waiting for him, and he went up to greet her after placing his mask on a shelf. 

“Erik,” she said, smiling as he placed both hands on either side of her face and gazing tenderly in her eyes. “Is everything okay?”

“Better than okay,” he murmured, a flush on his bare cheeks. “You are so very beautiful, did you know that?”

She blushed in turn, and covered one of his hands with her own. His normally clammy skin was warm and lifelike. 

He didn’t need much coaxing from her to sit next to her on the couch, and once he did so he bundled up her up in his arms, holding her as he stared unblinking at the fire. She abandoned her book to put her arms around him. 

“Was Raoul in my dressing room again?” she asked after a moment. 

“Hmm,” was his only reply, letting one lazy finger trace up and down her spine and over her shoulders. 

“I wish he’d stop bothering me. It’s getting excessive, frankly,” she continued. “Was that why you sent me down here? To keep him away from me?”

Erik started as though he’d just heard her, his mind coming back to him after having been a million miles away. 

“Raoul won’t bother you anymore, sweet child,” he assured her. “I’ve made certain of it.”

She was still for a moment before pressing herself closer to him, letting her tension melt away in his arms. She wasn’t going to think too much on the implications of what Erik had just said — or on what he had just done. It was no longer her concern, and she could do nothing about it. She really had tried to warn the poor young man. Poor Raoul. 

She smiled against the fabric of Erik’s shirt. 

“I’m glad,” she whispered. 

In the coming days and weeks and months there was a flood of gossip about the young vicomte who had up and disappeared. Some said he was hiding out in the countryside because his pride was wounded at having been turned down by an opera singer. Some said he had joined the navy and was off on a mission somewhere where he didn’t have to think of his lost love. Some said he’d found a different woman to fall head over heels for and that the happy couple had left France and all its tainted memories behind them. Some said he’d taken his own life, unable to bear the shame. Some even said that a certain young singer was not above suspicion in the matter, if he truly was dead. 

The gendarmes came to question her. Her answers were polite and helpful, her alibi impeccable. She was a sweet and charming young lady, and the gendarmes offered their condolences for the missing man and wished her a good day. 

When no scrap of a clue ever turned up, gossip began to wane, eventually settling on the consensus that the cowardly vicomte was off somewhere nursing his ego. Soon he wasn’t even an afterthought for most. Paris was never in short supply of new scandals and dramas, and the missing lovesick boy was swiftly forgotten. 

He was swiftly forgotten from the mind of his ex-fiancée as well. She had more important things to think about. 

For twelve glorious seasons Christine Daaé blossomed and reigned at the Opera Populaire. She became the leading lady of the stage and her fans adored her — but always from afar. They knew that was how she preferred it. She was a mystery to them, an enigma — like a beautiful flame atop a richly scented candle, she was alluring and inviting but could burn if one got too close. 

The jewel of the opera house, she brought crowd after crowd, night after night. As adored as she was, not much was known about her. No one could really say where she lived, or even where she’d come from. Her interactions with her public were brief, but warm and sweet. No one, not from those who interacted with her off the stage to those who sang beside her on the stage, had a bad word to say about Mlle Daaé. On occasion she could be spotted out and about in Paris, almost always alone, always dressed in splendid finery, and always with a dreamy, faraway look on her pretty face. 

She carried herself with the aura of someone who knew a fantastic secret, one that made her very happy and had changed her entire life. Try as they might, no one was ever able to figure out what this secret might be, though some guesses certainly came closer to the truth than others. She found endless amusement in the thought that Erik, a being who existed to drain the life from others, had caused her own empty and dull life to feel full and vibrant and lush. 

At the opera house she cultivated a small circle of friends, young women who swore they’d rather die than give up any of the prima donna’s secrets. During the day she would rehearse and spend a little time with these friends, and in the evenings she would disappear, down into the earth like Persephone, and like Persephone she would find her husband there waiting for her with her open arms. She slept peacefully in his embrace before going back above, knowing that he often followed her but kept to the shadows. They had their little tiffs every now and again — Erik saw many things differently than she did — but they worked through them as best they could, and while she sometimes thought of the way things might have been, she found she never truly regretted her choice. 

There had been no fanfare when Christine Daaé first arrived at the opera house, and there was no fanfare when she left. No one had even known that when they saw her it would be the very last time, and no one ever knew where, exactly, she had gone or what had happened to her. One night she gave a beautiful performance as she always did, radiant as she basked in their thunderous applause, and then the rich red curtain had fallen, and then Christine was gone. 

It was as if she had vanished off the face of the earth, leaving behind a dressing room with a door that refused to open, a young understudy with doe eyes and big dreams suddenly thrust into the now-empty but glittering spotlight, and a thousand questions about what had become of her. 

Even the strongest of the stagehands could not get her door to budge. The managers nearly passed out from horror at the thought that she’d somehow gotten trapped in her own room and possibly died or was in the process of dying and no one was able to help her. They hired a locksmith to come out and open the door, but even they failed to make any headway into opening it. It was as if the door were no longer a door but merely an extension of the wall now, the image of a door painted and carved into solid wood, pretty, ornate, but immovable. Eventually they gave up on trying to open it, and to this very day, no one has ever gotten it open. It sits there, even now, unused by anyone (to the best of our knowledge — if it somehow used by someone _from the inside_ , well, that is another story altogether). 

Her understudy was practically shaking with nerves when she was told the news. She was afraid of how she would ever live up to the prima donna’s reputation, how she could ever hope to be anywhere close to her level of talent. She was overjoyed, too, though she felt guilty about Christine’s disappearance. This was her big chance, her big break. For a while, everyone at the opera house whispered that the stress of it all would get to the girl, that she wouldn’t be able to step into the role after all, that she couldn’t fill Christine’s shoes. But then, the day before the next performance, a change came over her. She was calm — or as calm as she could be — and she stepped confidently on stage and let her voice soar. It was the beginning of her own marvelous career that spanned years, a career sparked by her predecessor’s mysterious absence. She never breathed a word about it while she was young, but when asked about it decades afterwards, she admitted that on that first performance night she didn’t think she could go through with it — until a Voice, a beautiful voice, a woman’s voice, floated down to her in her dressing room and spoke words of comfort and encouragement to her, and gave her the strength to perform the way she — and the Voice — knew she could. When asked if she knew who the voice could have belonged to, she became very quiet and looked away. She refused to answer any questions beyond that. 

As for where Christine went, no one ever found out. Some called it a publicity stunt, though these claims began to falter when she did not show up again. Some said that she had gone to another country to sing, changing her name. Some said she died. Some said she’d become a nun, or a recluse, renouncing the stage suddenly and for unknown reasons. Sometimes, years afterwards, a young chorus girl would pipe up that she knew where Christine had gone, but none of the girls who ever said this would ever elaborate, only giggle instead as their eyes sparkled with a hidden secret. Their claims were immediately brushed off as nonsense. 

Time marched on, but the missing soprano was never entirely forgotten, at least not by the girls and women who performed on the same stage and in the same building that she had, no matter how many years had passed. It was a thought in the back of the minds of all of them — how easy it was in this world for a woman to disappear and never be found. It ran through their subconscious like a chill down their back as they passed dark alleys, as they crossed the Seine and it’s deep, dark waters, and as men stared after them just a little too long and little too intently as they tried to go about their business on the street. 

A handful of years after Christine had disappeared, there came a certain man to the opera. He was rich, he was charming — he did not take no for answer. After he stepped over a boundary he shouldn’t have, he was found on the steps of the opera house, dead, and with a note pinned to his rumpled jacket and written in his own blood — _the girls under my protection_ will _be respected_.

It caused quit a stir, though no killer could ever be found despite the best efforts of searching. But ever after, a new level of respect was indeed afforded to the women of the Populaire, both when they were at the opera house and when they were elsewhere. Whose protection they were under, though — well, not even they were certain. 

Seasons came and seasons went. Certain patrons sometimes felt a cold chill down their spine, as though a set of glowing eyes were watching them. Girls who sought out places to be alone with their sadness sometimes heard the most lovely voice, a woman’s voice, singing to them softly, her song soothing their aching hearts, as though this mysterious hidden woman also knew what it was to be miserably alone in the world. 

There were still whispers of hauntings in the opera house. But as time went on, differing tales began to emerge. There was a man made of shadows, they said, and his flaming eyes burned in the darkness, and he ate men. But some said the opera house was haunted by female spirit, and if you were very quiet, you could hear the echoes of her singing. Some even said they’d seen her, with golden ringlets and burning blue eyes, and one young girl who swore she’d seen this ghost insisted that when she smiled, you could see a set of sharp fangs. Words like _vampire_ were brought up but quickly dismissed. This female spirit was friendly, they insisted — she protected all the girls who worked there. It was the male spirit that was malevolent — but though the girls were all frightened of him, they had to admit he’d never harmed them and never seemed to intend harm to them. 

Much of this was dismissed as silly superstition, as rumor, as tales from an unenlightened age. There are few, today, who believe that the opera ghosts really did exist. A creaking floorboard, a half-heard echo of a person around the corner, a squeaking door hinge — rational explanations for everything. But still, the whispers of the opera ghosts live on. 

If you ever find yourself in Paris, you can take a look inside the enormous building filled with red and gold, statues and secrets, chandeliers and dreams. Feast your eyes and glut your soul on the splendor, the drama that stretches itself out for you. But if you do find yourself walking those walking those ancient halls, make certain you’re respectful of the employees and the building — that you don’t go sticking your nose into places you shouldn’t, and be wary of the shadows you see in the corner of your eyes, of the voices that whisper from just around the corner. 

After all, they say the opera house is haunted.


End file.
